Christmas Vacation!

Okay, I'm still behind on getting things posted!

We spent Christmas Vacation in Durango, Colorado this year and had an amazing time! Eli turned 4 years old just a few weeks earlier so he was able to go to ski school and he really seemed to catch on pretty well. Cathy and I really enjoyed spending a couple days skiing while he was in school too!

We were going to go the week before Christmas, but there was only a 20" base of snow and only 2 out of 10 lifts were open so we decided to wait a week. During that week it snowed 53" and they ended up opening up all the lifts and nearly the entire mountain was up and running by the time we showed up. The days that we skied ended up being beautiful and we had a great time.

Eli loved the snow and was happy playing in the snow pile in the hotel parking lot before we even headed to the ski resort.

Once we got there, the slopes were wide open and the runs were awesome!
They had groomed most of the runs but there were several that still had some fresh powder.
The mountains are just beautiful.
We have pretty much decided to make this an annual vacation. We had a great time together as a family!
After a couple days of skiing we decided to take Eli on the Durango Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. It is supposed to be a beautiful train ride anytime, but it is supposed to be especially pretty in the winter. It was!
According to the conductor, this spot is over 400' straight down. It sure seemed to be every inch of it to me!
During the winter they don't go all the way to Silverton but stop about halfway there in the middle of the national forest. I think this is the Animas river.
Here's a picture of the return trip. It was like going back in time watching the steam engine chugging down the tracks.
We really had a great time and I highly recommend it to anyone. It was a wonderful Christmas vacation!

Long time, no post...

Well, it has been a long time since my last post. Sorry about that, but I've been pretty busy, both at home and at work.

I did manage to go hunting for a day and a half on our property in Fisher county, and I did see "Stubby" several times and chose to pass on him and in retrospect I shouldn't have. I was hoping to see "Mr. Big", but he didn't show up on camera for about a month before I was able to get out there and hunt and I didn't see "Tilt" on camera either. I haven't been down to check on things down there for a while so hopefully I'll have some pictures of them and they will have made it through the season to give me a chance at them next year.

Here's a picture of Stubby from a few days before I ended up seeing him and passing on him.
He is about the biggest bodied deer I've seen on my place and for sure is a mature animal and that should have been my criteria for deciding on whether to shoot him or not, but the thought of pulling the trigger on him and then seeing "Mr. Big" later on made me greedy and as a result I'm ending up with tag soup for this year on Texas Whitetail.

I've been posting on http://www.monstermuleys.com/ in their Hunt Adventure Challenge section on all my hunts this year and was very happy to find out that I was picked in the top 7 out of maybe 50 folks who were attempting to log their hunting seasons for everyone. For the most part the posts are very similar to what I've posted here, but some are in a little more detail and there are some that I didn't end up posting here. I doubt I will finish much above 7th place, but it is still neat to be picked in the top 7 and I'll at least win a hat and a T-shirt and a little bit of cash so that's pretty neat. If you are interested in reading the thread here is the direct link - Hunt Adventure Challenge Thread.

Of course things are really picking up at work, but I'll end up with more time stuck in a hotel room and am hoping to actually get caught back up on my posting maybe.

We spent Christmas in Durango as a family and got to get in some skiing with some great snow and beautiful weather and I'll try to get that uploaded and posted soon.

Sorry again for getting so far behind in my posting.

That's it for now. Nathan