Zach Sanderson

Jayne and I flew out to Colorado this past weekend to visit our friends the Daniels. Joe, Emily and their baby girl Georgia live in Denver and they had planned a weekend getaway in a cabin in the Rockies with us.

Georgia props her feet up to watch some Sesame Street in the basement.

First we hung out in Denver. Thursday night was Emily’s aunt’s birthday at a “Denver institution” Ship Tavern. The vibe at the tavern was awesome if a little old. The food was also pretty good although the service was spectacularly poor. I’m normally not a restaurant complainer but our waiter was top notch when it came to (purposeful, it seemed) obliviousness. Anyway, the prime rib sandwich was humongous and the company was good. Along with the Daniels, Emily’s folks were there as was her brother, Billy. Emily’s dad is a photographer. He’s also one of those “Denver institutions”. I had my camera with me so we talked a little bit of photo stuff. He’s very softspoken so in the buzzing tavern it was a little hard to talk shop. The birthday cake for the evening was a ski theme (and delicious theme) which was an appropriate send off for our trip the next day.

Roger kisses his granddaughter Georgia while Grandma Chris holds her at the Ship Tavern in Denver.

The next day we debated number of cars and then loaded two cars for our trip to the cabin at the YMCA of the Rockies’ Snow Mountain Ranch. Joe and I drove the caboose completing various errands before heading out of town. With Emily and Jayne hauling Georgia, there’s definitely more of a sense of urgency since a child in a car is like a ticking time bomb. You have to get there before she falls asleep or before she wakes up or else sleep patterns are ruined and the Earth is thrown off its axis. Being a parent has to be super humbling.

Joe loads Georgia into her car seat before our trip into the mountains.

After making it through the pass and a stop for pizza and hummus in Winter Park, we arrived at the Ranch. Our cabin was not ready so we went to the Nordic Center. We asked what the Nordic Center was and Joe told us it was where a bunch of tan blonde dudes stand around and talk about skiing. That wasn’t that far off except the dudes were replaced with those friendly but stern old lady types that you find at any YMCA. We rented skis. They asked us if we wanted classic or skates. I asked what does a beginner usually use and they said classic. After we were out on the trails, I saw tons of people wearing the skates and I was definitely coveting. The rollerblading mullet-head in me had the urge to skate in my skis.

Georgia tries on her shades (and a smile) in Deno's Mountain Bistro in Winter Park.

Cross country skiing is fun. This first time we just went to the off leash dog trail and did the loop. At one point we hit a berm caused by a snowplow and we could not navigate over it. We had quite the episode getting Jayne’s right ski back on. After that run we went back and fetched Emily and Georgia. Emily is preggers so skiing was out of the question for her which was a bummer. Georgia probably appreciated the company though.

Georgia crawls over to pet Monk in our cabin.

We checked in to our cabin and Joe and Jayne went and got provisions for dinner. Emily made up spaghetti with sausage. It was great and we all scarfed it down. I believe that night little Georgia was showing signs of sickness. She was not real happy. The night went fast for me because I’m a heavy sleeper but I’m sure Joe and Emily would disagree. The following night was not any better for Georgia. In fact it was worse. The diagnosis after the trip actually ended up being the flu.

Georgia avoids one camera to be shot by another in our cabin in the Rockies.

The next day we did some more skiing and Joe even did some snowshoeing with their dog Monk. One thing we did while skiing was keep track of number of times we fell on our asses. Jayne definitely won (lost) but by the end her numbers were a lot closer.

Joe waxes his old wooden skis before another skiing run. His classic wooden skis turned some heads at the Nordic Center.

During some afternoon downtime, Jayne and I decided to go wall climbing. We heard there was a climbing wall so we signed ourselves up. We showed up and no one was there to escort us. So we wandered around and ran into a Y instructor. She said, “Are you our last two climbers?” We said, “Sure” and went into the climbing room. We were at least double the age of everybody climbing. More likely triple. There were some adults there in harnesses but that was clearly for the sake of their child. None of them went on the wall. It definitely felt weird waiting in line for a wall behind an 8 year old. Or going when some other kid wanted to go. We tired ourselves out and then got out of there. We decided to cleanse our palate of such childish behavior and go rollerskating. It was basically the same situation though. But at least this time we were skating circles around the little eight year olds.

Joe comforts a cranky, sick Georgia after bedtime in the cabin.

That night we ate some dinner and played some spades and watched some TV movies. I was the odd man out with my opinion of movies on TV. I hate them. Jayne LOVES them. We could own something or have it available at all times on Netflix Instant and she will watch it on TV, commercials and all. We watched Air Force One or President Kickass as Jayne and Joe were calling it. Then we watched A Time To Kill but unfortunately it was A Time For Bed so we didn’t get to finish it.

The next morning we packed up to head back but we had those skis rented for the rest of the day. So after vacating our cabin and sending Emily and Georgia and Monk on their way. Joe, Jayne and I tried out one last set of trails. We upped the difficulty and conquered some more hills, up and down. That allowed for more spectacular spills and a few bruised legs and twisted ankles. It was lots of fun though picking ourselves out of the deep, deep snow banks.

We dried off and headed back to Denver before the Breckenridge/Keystone crowd caught up to us that evening. On our way back, we stopped at Idaho Springs for some BeauJo’s Pizza. Since we skied that day we thought it necessary to order the Skier Mike pizza. The unique thing about BeauJo’s is the pizza has a huge crust on it. Typically not my thing. But it’s made this way to allow you to soak your crust in honey and eat it. And that’s an awesome way to eat it.

Billy waits for his balloon to inflate and dispense from the balloon vending machine at Casa Bonita.

It was good we got our bellies full of delicious pizza because we had plans that night to punish our bellies. Casa Bonita, a “Denver institution” of a different sort, was on our agenda. Emily’s brother, Billy was excited as hell to take us there. If you’re not familiar with Casa Bonita, there’s an entire South Park episode devoted to it. Animated construction paper doesn’t do it justice though. My best description of it is Chuck-E-Cheese meets Mexican food meets Disney World. The commitment to atmosphere is on a Walt Disney level. The commitment to food quality is even below Chuck-E-Cheese’s and the arcade is probably worse too. But the mariachi band was actually really good. And they have a huge waterfall with cliff divers. Every hour or so they’d have a cliff diver come up and do some acrobatic dive. But in between, in order to get their money’s worth out of the pool and waterfall, they had some sort of show that would incorporate the water. Like a princess would come out and speak, but if you looked closely you saw a bathing suit under that ill-fitting costume and you knew she was soon going to go into the water. Another highlight of Casa Bonita is a helium balloon vending machine. Anything to distract you from the food.

Emily holds Georgia after Georgia woke up to say goodbye before we drove to the airport.

Emily, Georgia and Billy say goodbye to us from the porch as we get in Joe's car to head to the airport.

The next morning we hung around and watched some Sesame Street and then rolled out toward the airport. We had a heck of a trip. We knew going into it was going to be fun. The Daniels are very relaxing to hang out with and we always feel like we’re having fun whether we’re powering our way up a hill on some skis or making fun of the sweat on Matthew McConaughey’s body throughout all of A Time To Kill.

There’s the slideshow but I also took a panorama of the view from our cabin. I’ll try to embed it here but for now you can go to the Gigapan website to see it.

My buddy Don is teaching a class at Stanford this quarter on photojournalism. This Christmas I was sharing my frustration with him that I was having an assignment drought. So, he gave me one for my trip to Kentucky. I’ll quote him on this one:

Here’s your assignment: Show me Kentucky the way you experience it. I’ve never been, so I want to see everything about it. Make pretty pictures, give me a narrative. Shoot at sunrise and at sunset. Pretty light. Laughter. Moments. Family. Stuff that matters. Stuff that doesn’t matter.

When I got back I sent him some of my favorites. I’ve been holding off posting them because I thought I’d write more about the trip. Well it’s been a month and I haven’t done that yet. They were put to good use though. Don liked them and shared some of them with his class to help illustrate his lesson on the Visual Narrative. I used the opportunity to pop in and get a free one day Stanford education plus, let’s be honest, inflate my head a little seeing my shots talked about on a crappy school projector.

Here are some of my faves:

Don ended up showing 9 of those.

The other day I was on the phone with my ma. Among other things, she told me about my brother’s new job. My folks and my brother moved to Lexington, Kentucky recently. My dad took a job at UK. Now my parents have a horse place out in the middle of horse country among all the horse people. These people are so in to their horses they are currently hosting the World Equestrian Games at the nearby Kentucky Horse Park and surrounding area.

My brother has a job as a server at a banquet hall at a university club. It sounds like because of the World Equestrian Games the place stays pretty busy. My mom was telling me about all this and she said, “Guess who he waited on.” She said it with a kind of chuckle in her voice that she normally reserves for Republicans she hates. So I guessed, “Some Republican?” She said, “I don’t know if he is. Captain Kirk.” I was wrong, she was just chuckling because it’s pretty absurd/amazing that my brother is taking (or negotiating?) William Shatner’s order.

I thought that was pretty funny. Then she said, “Guess who else he had this weekend.” She told me how he met a woman who said she was from the Bay Area. He mentioned that his brother lived out there now in Palo Alto. She said, “I’m from Palo Alto.” She asked what I did out here. He said right now that I was taking a photography class. (Probably covering for my unemployed ass.) She said that her son teaches photography at Stanford. He told her I was taking a sports photography class at Stanford. She said her son teaches a sports photography class at Stanford. Besides Captain Kirk, my brother also served my photography instructor’s mother.

Small world.

People hiking around a peak on Juniper Canyon Trail; a California condor soars overhead

Jayne and I visited Pinnacles National Monument a few hours south of us. Pinnacles is a California condor release site and has a series of trails that wind through caves and foresty and deserty peaks. We were having a hankering for a summer trip flashback and wanted to find some place where we could hike deeper away from our car or any other cars.

The drive to Pinnacles took us south toward Gilroy and then off on smaller roads with names like Airline Highway. This road was one of those roads where the sign said 55 mph but it didn’t matter because 1) there were no cops around and 2) with all those turns you would have had a tough time keeping it above 55. I love those kind because I can look away from the speedometer and focus on the shoulder and the turkey buzzards ahead. Good thing my Forester has a turbo (and a compass in the stock).

We didn’t realize this weekend was still National Parks Week so that coupled with the nice weather made the place actually pretty packed. There’s nothing nerds like more than FREE trips to a national monument.

Along the hike, any biggish bird we came across we wondered if it was a condor. We even asked two dudes who seemed like they knew because they looked like they might actually live in the alcove they were resting in, “Are those condors?” They reassured us that we would know when we saw one and be pretty lucky to actually see one. As we came up over a clearing on the drier side of the peaks cleverly called Condor Gulch Trail we realized what they meant. We saw this lone huge bird just riding the wind overhead. Other hikers were stopped and pointing their cameras that direction. It was most definitely one of the 50 California condors in central California.

After doing a big 8 mile loop, we were back at a shuttle pick up area. Parking was full enough that they were shuttling people from trails to other further away parking lots. There were tons of boy and girl scouts and den mothers and nerd dads waiting around but we hung out for a few seconds still to see what the shuttle story was. After counting people and the infrequency of shuttles, we decided to start the hike back to our car.

The trails we hiked at Pinnacles highlighted

But not before learning a new game that a group of girls were playing. I haven’t captured the objective but it involved about 5 or 6 girls spread out with the bossiest of the girls saying “1..2..3..NINJA!” and everybody stopping on “NINJA!” and posing with some sort of karate pose.

On the ride back we passed Gilroy’s outlets and we ended up in stores like Brooks Brothers and Coach with hiking boots, dirty t-shirts and cargos on and shining from sweat and sunscreen wondering why every clerk was asking us if they could help us with anything.