My Mother and Jerry came for Easter and stayed for a week. Every single time we took the Jeep somewhere it was a major event. My cousin Ryan also came to visit for the week. I had him out on the slopes. While it was slightly intimidating for a novice east coast skier he was a trooper about it. Since he just turned 21 that week I was also able to get him out to experience Apres and Aspen nightlife (now he wants to move there).
My oldest friend Chris, his wife Joanne, and his brother Steve who all live in CO, came over for a home cooked Easter dinner. Congratulations to Chris and Joanne as they just had their first baby!!! A couple of days after all the Aspen Mountains were closed we got dumped on. My friend Owen (a snowboard instructor) and I decided we were going to hike to the top of Ajax and take a run. It took us 4 hours and there were already several tracks by the time we got to the top. It was awesome to see Aspen at the end of April covered in snow. Just a few days after snowboarding down Ajax I was out with my neighbors for some fly fishing lessons. Leslee and Rottie are both fly fishing instructors during the summer and ski instructors in the winter. They invited me along for a free lesson and provided me with all the necessary equipment. They also have two Labs Lily and Denali. Every single day when I came home from skiing I would spend 30 min playing with them. Believe it or not this is also an amazing white water rafting river. When the snow melt hits its peak this river will swell 7 feet higher than it is right now and hits rafting ratings of 4 and 5. Every day I would head up into the mountains for a hike. It was fun to be on the same slopes that just weeks earlier I was skiing on. They used snow cats to cut a road to the top as they prepare the on mountain facilities for the summer. Caught the fly fishing bug and went out one more time with another friend. There is definately an art to this.
I didn't catch a single thing, but, in all fairness I was only out there for 8 hours. In addition, I fell in about two feet of water and my waders filled up with feezing cold snow melt. Do they have an Apres in fly fishing. A lone aspen leaf...a fitting picture to say goodbye. |
