Why Moms Never Stop Worrying

I have a couple of neat things that I want to blog about, but right now I have things I have to do for the show. So, today I am going to show you this awesome picture.....


This is a mountain out in Colorado that my youngest son Matt and his friends are hoping to snowboard down this weekend if the weather permits! He insists that the photo makes it look much worse than it really is.

All I can say is......yeah, right!

Vacation Photos

Well, this is the end of my Colorado vacation pictures. I hope you aren't sick of them. I just find the mountains so awesome to look at. Most of these were taken either on our way to Telluride, or while we were out and about. Enjoy and have an awesome evening!

The first view of the mountains on our way in

How would you like to own that house and get to look at that every day?

I love the different formation of the rocks

I thought this was the funniest looking line of clouds. The one looks like an animal of some kind!

Clouds rolling in. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't.

In areas that don't get much sun, the snow never melts!

The town nestled in the valley

These are HUGE cliffs!

You can tell how tall these are by the size of the trees!

That big dark spot is the shadow of a cloud on the hillside. How cool is that?

Chee hoo! Chat with you soon!

Ophir Colorado

When we were in Telluride visiting Matt, he asked if we wanted to take a ride to Ophir. Not wanting to miss a thing while we were out there, we said, "Sure". He said it's just a little town up in the mountains, but quite unique. He wasn't kidding.

The view in Ophir is amazing in itself. It's "a bit" out of the way, and it's another one of those towns where I just kept asking, "What do these people do for a living?" and "Where do these people work?" Matt wasn't able to answer my question, but it didn't matter. There are no stores or restaurants or anything like that, but the "town" is just the cutest little thing.

You know how most towns have a sign as you enter, telling you the population? Well, Ophir has one too, only it's a little different than most of the ones you see.

Here is the Ophir post office. I'm not sure if there is a postal employee, or how they get their mail, but the post office is just priceless!

I've seen resourceful people, but this guy has taken it one step further and created an awesome work of art! His fence is made of snow skis!

This is their other welcome sign. How sweet is this?

I'm thinking I wouldn't choose Ophir as a place to live, but definitely worth a drive through if you are ever in the area!

Let's Go Snowboarding

I had planned to write about something else today, but when Matt sent me this photo and told me he was going to snowboard today, I had to change gears. This is the middle of June and there is still snow at the higher elevations out in Colorado. He actually did a little snowboarding yesterday, but today they are going to snowboard this.

I immediately get nervous because this isn't the ski resort. This is just out somewhere in the wilderness. Although the threat of avalanches is very, very small, I find the look of this mountain to be quite ominous. They saw this on their way back from snowboarding yesterday and went in to investigate. They found a way to get to it and decided that today they will venture on in.

He tells me it's no different than any other rock climbing he does, except they are taking ice picks, and if you are going to climb up the mountain for hours, then why would you climb back down when it's much faster to hop on your snowboard and glide on down?

I told him it looked really steep and he said that's just the way the picture looks. I asked him about him falling off a cliff and he laughed.

I know that Matt is very cautious snowboarding and he did say that if it didn't look safe when they got up there that they certainly woldn't go.

I have been in my worried mommy mode all day today and I am just waiting to hear his sweet little voice or see those texted words.....we're back.

Search and Rescue

A few months ago Matt was asked if he might be interested in joining the Telluride volunteer Search and Rescue Team. At the time, he assumed that when you were part of SAR that when you got pages, you had to go. Being a public school teacher, he knew that wouldn't always be possible so he didn't pursue it. He was asked again and yet again. The last time, he actually started asking questions and found out that when you get paged for a call, you go if you can.

Knowing he could be part of the team made him start asking even more questions, but now they were directed at himself. Could he be committed enough to attend the twice monthly training sessions, which would go on for many many months? Could he wear a pager 24/7 and drop whatever he was doing to go on a call? Could he deal with the emotional side of this kind of work?

The last question was the only one he was unsure of when he attended his first training class last week. It will be many months before he goes out on a call, so it's hard to answer that one.

The first class was held in an airplane hangar learning all about helicopters. You never know what kind of vehicle you will be using for a rescue. It could be snowmobile or a helicopter, a 4WD vehicle...whatever it takes to get you to the scene.

You might need to find someone that is lost in the mountains, or help someone that has fallen off a cliff, you could be searching for someone buried in an avalanche, or even recovering bodies from a car that went over the side of the mountain. You don't know what awaits you.

Matt's feeling is that no matter whether you are assisting in a search or a rescue, you are helping someone. It might be a rescue where you save a life, or if you are retrieving a body, you are helping the family and friends of the victim put some closure on a tragedy.

Matt will continue to attend classes and I will update you from time to time on what he's learning.

Speaking of avalanches....they scare the heck out of me, but I am also in awe of them. I can watch videos of them over and over and over again. Kind of like a video of a tornado. It's like I can't believe what I am seeing. Here is a video of a controlled slide. Often times they will create man made avalanches when conditions become unsafe on the mountain. This is in Telluride where Matt lives.