Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Fall Catch-up

Visited:

Every summer, Mr. B and I like to get far away from the oppressive heat and humidity of Alabama and escape to somewhere that is, well, NOT hot and humid.  We spent a long Labor Day weekend at our friends beautiful home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado and then just a few weeks ago we headed to  Exclusive Resorts fabulous new Sun Valley, Idaho residence.


Wow is this place stunning.  After being in this cramped rental for the last three months, it was nice to have SPACE.  This place is probably 12,000 square feet so it was a little more that just the two of us needed, but it would be fabulous for a family vacay.  The outdoor living area is really luxe with a fireplace that's perfect for the cool evenings.


You also get to wake up to these stunning sunrises if you're like me and never fully acclimate to the time zone change!  It also might mean that you miss the sunsets......


The house is in a development that's great for morning walks and it also connects to the miles and miles of paved bike and walking trails.  The next time I would definitely rent bicycles for the week to take advantage of that.







We totally lucked out one morning and ran into this nice family.......





Papa was bring up the rear and stopped to give me the stink eye just to prove he's in charge.






We didn't get to as much hiking as we normally do but what we did was really beautiful....the Aspens were at full peak.


We hiked the Adams Gulch trail which was nice easy/intermediate five miles.


We seriously considered making the drive to Yellowstone, but decided the eight hours round trip wouldn't give us near enough time to even begin to see everything so we opted for something a little closer...Crater of the Moon National Monument.


I'm not going to give you a whole geology/history lesson here (click on the link above if you're interested) but it's basically a lava field that covers approx 600 square miles and is much cooler that I expected!  Sometimes hubs likes to do some weird sight seeing that doesn't really float my boat, but I enjoyed this.  They did mention that during the summer months, the ground temp can get to be around 150 deg. F., so there's that to consider.


It was perfect the day we were there.





I'd recommend the caves if you're not claustrophobic or have a big fear of bats......yeah, you read that right.


We only went down into one of them because you need a flashlight and we only had the one on the iPhone, which wasn't quite powerful enough for me.  I'm one of those that has a MAJOR fear of bats.






Anywho, very cool place and I recommend visiting.


We didn't have any plans for the whole day and decided to take a different way back to Sun Valley (when you leave the park, go east on 20,  north on 93, then take Trail Creek Road back to Sun Valley. It didn't initially seem like much until we got about 5 miles out of SV, where the road became VERY narrow with a VERY steep drop off.......and these views.




You could see for miles.  I lost about 10 years off my life when we encountered an SUV pulling a rather large camper and I thought we were going over the edge, but since we didn't, so worth it.


I think the biggest thing that struck us was the quality of the restaurants for a town with a population of 3,000 people.  We attributed that to the "part-time" residents along the lines of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.....and thousands others just like them.  I totally get why they'd want to spend their summers here.  We highly recommend The Kneadery for breakfast (you won't need lunch!), Cristina's and Perry's for lunch, and Enoteca and Globus for dinner.


Reading:

I read this while we were in Idaho because I'm that girl that always likes to read the book before I see the movie and then end up always being disappointed in the movie because it's never as good as the book.  Case in point.  Read the book, skip the movie.....I don't care if Tina Fey does star.




Oh and I took this quiz which says I should read this book next, so when I'm finished with this one and since it's already in my Kindle library, I will!!


Downloaded:

I've used this app when we were hiking in both Colorado and Idaho and love it.  It's accurate and the GPS came in handy!





Watching:

Or can't wait to anyway.....the new season of Homeland starts this Sunday with a double episode.





Eating:

It's finally starting to feel a little like Fall here so I'm in soup mode.  I'll be making these favorites and freezing them for easy last minute dinners

Tyler Florence's roasted tomato soup

Smitten Kitchen's Black Bean with toasted cumin seed creme,  That crema is da bomb.

The Barefoot Contessa's Mexican chicken soup and also her Cream of Wild mushroom soup.  Ina never disappoints


Surfing:

I'm loving Vogue's 73 question series.....OMG Reese Witherspoon's home


Shopping:

The Piperlime Collection.....it's reasonably priced and I'm coveting this coat.


Listening:

The Queen of Soul covers Adele (shouldn't it be the other way around?) and KILLS it.











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