Glen Eyrie/Queens Canyon

Today we went to Queens Canyon, which is located in Glen Eyrie. It was a beautiful day; one of the first that we have had in a long time, but it was perfect for hiking. If you plan on hiking at Glen Eyrie you must fill out reservations on their website as well as print and sign wavers for each adult in your party. There are several trails, but Queens Canyon was the first one we did and seems to be one of the prettiest.

Andre and I invited Pierre and his new friend Christina; it was a very pleasant and scenic hike. The trail is short and it contains lots of makeshift bridges along cliffs near a river. Eventually the trail ended and we found ourselves heading of off private property and into a national forest. We had to cross the river several times in order to make any progress and eventually it became to difficult to continue and we turned back.

Everyone managed to stay dry but me, I got so tired of trying to balance across the river on loose rocks that I began just walking through the river in my hiking boots. When we were done with the trail we decided to try another. We started hiking a trail called Fire Road, which was nothing like Queens Canyon. It was dirt trail without any trees that was pretty much a straight incline for several miles. Eventually we all got to hot to finish it and turned around, but it did have some nice views of Garden of the Gods and the city.

Overall Glen Eyrie is a beautiful piece of property with some great trails, it’s certainly a good place to go hiking especially if you like hiking near water. I also made a video of our excursion check it out at

VillaSports

This past weekend we decided to join VillaSport which is an athletic club and spa. Although it is a bit pricy you seem to get what you pay for, and we were pleasantly surprised with all of the amenities that are provided when you become a member.

It’s a fantastic facility that’s bigger than any gym I’ve been ever been a part of. The locker rooms contain a lounge with big screen TV’s, cable, and leather couches. In both the men’s and women’s locker room is a steam room with a TV, a sauna with a TV and each locker room has its own hot tub. There are plenty of individual showers with glass doors for privacy, each shower contains large bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. There is also an ample supply of body lotion, mouth wash blow dryers etc. The lockers have their own digital locks that you simply make up a code for and enter when you need to get back into it. You really don’t need to bring much from home which makes it nice and easy to get up and go work out.

There is a café that serves breakfast lunch and dinner, a bar, free Wi-Fi, and a spa (not included but you do get a discount). The facility has a large amount of workout equipment; including free weights, weight machines and an ample supply of cardio equipment (every single treadmill has its own TV with cable). There is a full sized basketball court, a fire pit, five pools, four water slides (two outside, two inside) and a third hot tub that is half inside and half outside. Enough said. It’s pretty awesome.

We’ve been a couple times so far and I’ve got to say, it has been really nice having somewhere to workout and go swimming even when the weather isn’t so good. Every time I have gone it’s been relatively empty, or maybe it just seems empty because it’s so big. The only complaint I have is there are a lot of kids, not to sound old and grumpy or anything but there are several pools designated for adults only and there are always kids in them, so I don’t think they really enforce it. Overall it’s a great place to work out and hang out and I’m sure we will be spending a lot of our summer hours at the outdoor pools.

Helen Hunt Falls

Today we decided to take advantage of some of the nice weather and ventured out to Helen Hunt Falls for a short hike. The weather was great when we got there and we got some nice pictures. We hadn't been there before but it's not long at all, the trail is less than half a mile. There is lots of water which makes it really pretty. When the trail ended we didn't stop despite the warning signs, we did a little bit of scrambling and made it to the top of one of the waterfalls. At the top there was a road and a creepy closed down tunnel along with some more nice views.

I have been making lots of youtube videos with imovie and made a video of this trip. To view my videos just go to

New Posts!

It has been almost a year since my last post. Since I am taking the summer off from school I have decided to go ahead and commit to keeping up on posting some of our adventures. We have a severe case of cabin fever at this point in the year since it is almost May and we are still being snowed on.

We are both keeping busy with school and work, and we were recently introduced to an awesome Showtime series called “Dexter”. With the bad weather Andre spends a lot of his time playing videogames and watching sports. I have been getting back in touch with my musical self by practicing the piano and learning the guitar.

We are looking forward to the summer and we plan on adding a new addition to the family (a dog) whenever we find the right one :). We have a large “to-do” list this year and I am looking forward to documenting everything.

Recipes

With everyone trying to eat better these days we tried some new recipes this week and thought we would share them.

The first thing we made is Vietnamese spring rolls. These are a little different than regular spring rolls as they are not fried, but are made with rice paper wraps that you simply soak in warm water.

When the wraps were softened we filled them with thin rice noodles, saute'd shitake mushrooms, avocado, fried tofu, basil, shredded carrots etc… you can pretty much fill them with whatever you want, we put shrimp in Andre’s instead of tofu. Then you wrap them up like an egg roll and serve them with a Thai peanut sauce for dipping.



The next thing we tried was fried sesame tofu with Thai sweet chili sauce. Andre and I have never, ever liked tofu but this recipe definitely changed our minds. These were delicious!!!

You are going to want to purchase Extra Firm organic tofu for this recipe. When you get it you need to drain all the water out of it and pat it dry. Now because it was soaking in water you need to press it, I put a paper towel on the top of it followed bye some heavy textbooks then let it stand for about 15 minutes. Soak up all the water and then wrap the tofu in some paper towels and put the books back on for another 15-45 minutes. You really want this tofu to be dry.

You are going to cut the tofu in to small one-inch cubes.
While the tofu is being drained of its water you can mix the other ingredients together.

So in a bowl mix together

5 Tablespoons of sesame seeds
4 Tablespoons of corn starch
4 Tablespoons of rice flour
½ a teaspoon of salt
½ a teaspoon of sugar

After that is mixed together you are going to coat each individual cube of tofu in the mixture, coat it extremely well so that it is completely covered with the powder.

Take out a large nonstick pot and pour about 1 ½ inches of canola oil in it, then turn the heat to medium. After the oil is heated drop about 5 of the tofu cubes in the oil and wait a full minute before pulling them out with some highly heat resistant tongs. (We used silicon tongs, which stood up to the oil well.)

Put the fried cubes on some paper towels so that they can dry, then repeat with the rest of the cubes.

When they're are all done serve them with a Thai sweet chili sauce which can be found in the Asian section of any grocery store.

The Lake

So some of Andre's relatives are watching a house that has a lake, a ranch and an indoor pool, which is awesome. So they had a party and we drove up yesterday and swam for a while and I got to ride a horse named Skip. It was pretty fun. Andre, Pierre, Monique + some cousins and I all took a small boat up to some ledges and did some jumping and diving into the lake which was a lot of fun.








Well it was a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll be able to visit again next summer.

Remodeling

So here are two videos, one of the guest bedroom we just ripped the carpet out of and the other of our tiny master bathroom which had moldy linoleum in it.

You can't really hear me, it seems I was mumbling or something so just turn the volume off.