What are Mary, Justin, Grey and Hazel up to?: cabin in the mountains

Last weekend, for valentine's mary and I decided to rent a cabin up in the mountains! We have never done this so we didn't really know what to expect, and our options were a little limited because we wanted to take the dogs, and not very many places took dogs. Through a lot of online searching, we came across a place called Avalanche Ranch, so we booked one of their cabins for saturday and sunday nights, we had president's day off! The ranch is pretty much in the middle of no where but there a few amazing little towns near by. Redstone is a little village that is located in the middle of the white river national forest, and that was a neat place to visit (little stores and coffee shops). There was also Carbondale about 12 miles from the ranch which is considered "what Aspen could have been" because it has all the beauty but none of the snobby rich people. We ate there once for breakfast, very quaint town with lots of restaurants and art galleries, I have decided that we are going to retire there because of the food and the art (what else do you need?).

Below is a photo tour of our trip, sorry for the length of the post, but we truly want to make this an annual thing now and want to show you how great this place is! I guess the ranch gets really busy in the summer, but the winter was perfect, not many people and lots of snow!

mary made a carrot cake before we left (from scratch!)

sammy and most of sophie on the road

the weather was not too good on 70 going up the mountains, but it was pretty!

as we walked into our cabin, they had champagne and home made cookies waiting for us!

inside the cabin, it was quite nice...there was a futon, full kitchen, woodstove, a loft, and a bathroom!

view of kitchen, loft and woodstove

it was definitely a ranch, they had lots of animals! here is one of the fat sheep, and a pony, they were always very hungry. (it was very snowy when we got there)

there was a community hot tub, which we were the only ones to use because it was really close to our cabin. nothing beats being in a hot tub in the middle of the mountains while it's snowing!

it was too snowy to see a lot of the mountains on our first day, but we woke up to this view right outside our cabin in the morning!

the outside of our cabin, sophie was guarding the door. we were able to have the dogs off leash which was great!

across from our cabin were where all the animals were kept, there was one rooster that always just stood on one leg, he was crazy. i really like this picture though, it is currently the background on our computer. ( i know it's been done, but i think i want to take pictures of chickens and then put them in a calendar...hehe)

view from just up the road from our cabin

justin and mountains

there were some hiking trails behind the ranch property, so we went adventuring. sammy and sophie would just run up and down the trails, it was really funny...here they are running back to us.

there was a pond at the end of one of the trails, and a bridge to get across, the dogs really liked it, they kept going back and forth.

outside the window from our cabin, it must have been windy at the top!

after all the running sam got real tired...i really like this pic of him

well both dogs got real tired

on sunday we decided to drive around, these signs were everywhere! i like the addition underneath this one though.

there was a town nearby called marble, we soon found out why. there is a huge marble quarry in the town, and huge marble pieces we in front of everyone's house, we kinda wanted to take one and then make a counter top out of it.

on our drive we went up to a pass on the road, and there was a big grove of aspen trees, and all of the eyes we staring at us.

view from the top of the pass

roads going back down weren't too good, mary was scared

at one point mary was in charge of the camera, and she wanted to get the perfect show of the river, trees, and mountains. this is the best one out of about 100...good job mary!