I always carry a water bottle with me now, too

Wow. What a nice couple of months it's been. I realized a few weeks ago that the title "enjoying the Colorado winter" was probably misleading in that you all thought I was skiing. HA! You were wrong, because I saw the ski slopes of Vail this summer, and I noticed that they were terrifyingly high even without being covered in snow and littered with expert skiers whizzing by me as I struggle to keep my balance. NO THANK YOU.

Really, I was enjoying a mild, sunny winter. Last year I spent most of February curled up in a ball in front of my computer, desperately refreshing weather.com to see if there was a day of sunshine in the forecast. I never thought of myself as a person who needed sunshine, but you know, I guess I am. I am in love with Colorado in a way I wasn't for the first few months I lived here. There's something about it that turns you into an outdoorsy person, and I'm not sure exactly what it is. Do you know I am looking forward to the summer, not because it will be sunny, or because we can be cheap and not turn on the heat, but because I will get to go camping? For real. ME. I want to CAMP. I have never felt the desire to camp before IN MY LIFE. I just signed up for a membership to REI.

Last weekend a friend from Ohio came to visit, so we went up to Rocky Mountain National Park. I knew most of the trails and roads would be closed for the winter, but there's nothing quite like being up in the mountains. We ended up at stopping at a trail for a quick look around, but we didn't make it too far up the path because the snow was pretty deep:



Yeah, that's a sign that you're supposed to be looking UP at.

Anyway, one of my friends had mentioned that she was going to try snowshoeing a few weeks before, but I had dismissed it as one of those outdoorsy things I was never going to get into. Snowshoes, in my mind, were something you crafted yourself and used only if you lived in an igloo in Yukon or if you were David the Gnome. Turns out it's a lot less like this and a lot more like this, which is something I noticed when we went up to the park that day. There were snowshoers all over the place, and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to go snowshoeing.

So two days later, we rented snowshoes and went back to the park for one of the most fun hikes I've ever been on.



So now I spend a lot of time wondering, when can I go back outside? When will it be warm enough to try some new outdoorsy thing? How will I afford all the fun gear at REI? And of course, how soon am I going to want to try skiing?