It’s been a while since our last update about where we are and what we’ve been doing so let me get you up to speed. We last left off in Salida, CO staying in the alley behind our friend’s house. Our stay there was excellent as usual. We also were able to get some packages shipped to us and get some final repairs done. But eventually we had to leave because I was registered to compete in the Go Pro Mountain Games Steep Creek Championships on June 8th.

So the week before we headed north to Red Cliff, CO. We found a beautiful campsite on Homestake Creek which was great in every way, except for that we couldn’t get service there.

A fast-paced Friday of driving to Vail, working in a coffee shop, taking a long lunch to go find another spot and getting stuck in the mud 5 miles from a paved road later,

and we found a new site that would work great just north of Vail, CO.

The weekend before the games, I got to go kayaking with some friends and then went to go do some practice laps of Homestake Creek where the race would be held. I ended up doing three practice laps with a couple professional kayakers from Team Jackson which was exciting. Here is the first and best lap:

When the next two laps went really poorly though, so I decided to bow out of the race and just be a spectator on race day. I also was able to help with safety on one of the other races going on during the festival. I still ended up with a swag bag and OluKai gave me some free shoes for being one of the first people to sign up for an event, so I’m not that upset about not racing, especially because it was really fun to watch.

After the race on Thursday, I had to work on Friday, but Friday evening we went to the beautiful Eagle-Vail pool for twilight swim (7-8pm) and some cheap showers (we went 9 days on only 35 gallons of water so real showers were a real treat 🙂 )

 

Then it was time for the weekend events!!! Honestly we’ve always had mixed feelings about this festival on the weekend. Thursday was great, but the weekend is ridiculously crowded. They estimated there were 70,000 people there and Vail just isn’t built for that many. Parking is extremely difficult, it is wall to wall people at any event you actually want to watch, and there are so many dogs that we can’t bring our dog Cheat with us. At least we were able to find free camping.

(Pro Tip about camping at Go Pro Games: get there early and expect lots of neighbors. We had our site on the Saturday before the festival and there was no one up there, but Thursday some nice people came up and asked really nicely if they could camp with us. Sure the site was easily big enough and they were nice so no problem. Some of our friends also were in town to present at the festival and they joined us too for a night. The problem was when 3 more cars and an RV trailer all decided that they also could camp with us without asking and then let their dogs run around off leash through our camp. We weren’t amused. If that was you and you’re reading our blog, you were kind of dicks. If you need a site that large, don’t expect to show up Friday night and find a free site. If you try anyways, you should ask really nicely what spaces are actually available before you just set up, you shouldn’t expect your dogs to be able to take over the camp, and you shouldn’t be partying until 1AM in the morning when you have neighbors close enough they can touch your car from where they sleep. Don’t be dicks next year.)

We did have some fun on Saturday and Sunday though. We got to watch and participate in a ton of the other events like aerial yoga:

and I went kayaking with our friends Ruth and Jeremiah on Sunday morning for a really fun run on Gore Creek through town (sorry no pictures of that). Sunday was also great because we go to watch our friend Sarah who was in the climbing competition where she rocked it!

I’m so glad we got to see our friends and enjoy the beautiful weather all weekend long. It’s going to be a long summer until we can see them in Winter Park again!