Matt and Emily's Adventure Blog

The Concept of Abundance When we decided to get married we were beyond thrilled to share our love with all of our friends and family. What a gift it is that we can all gather in a meaningful place to express our devotion to one another. One thing that distressed us about our wedding was the image we had in our minds of a big pile of plates, crockpots, and other material wedding gifts. What we need in our lives is your love. The material things will always be there for us at the thrift store. Consequently, we have decided to ask that no one brings us gifts. When we chatted about what we would do to still follow the tradition of giving as we begin a new step in our lives we instantly knew what to do. Our good friend Rajan Rathnavalu is one of the founders of a Camrose based non-profit organization,  NEWO . He says that their company's outlook is that when we receive abundance, we should give it back to the community. We knew that NEWO would know what to do with our abundance, a

Marble Mountain Madness Wednesday, August 9 th , Shana saves the day In anticipation for a four-day mountain running weekend, Emily discovered that Shana Light, a member of the Maroon Belles Trail Club, is a Marble resident who works in Carbondale and would thus be an ideal way for us to get to this little mountain village southwest of town. Luckily, Shana was happy to help out a couple of runner bums from Canada and agreed to pick us up at 6:30pm. Acquainted, packed up and thrilled to be off, Emily and I listened to Shana’s informative guide-like narration as we approached the greater Marble area. We drove through “town” and approached Beaver Lake, where I thought Shana would be happy to finally kick us out of her jeep. But, to our surprise, she generously drove us up Daniels Hill and along the Lead King Basin Rd until the North Lost trailhead. As much as this stretch was out of her way, Emily and I both deducted that Shana was glad to have an excuse to drive up this rough

Sunday, August 6 th , the Prince Creek Crawl -        Emily and I set off late afternoon on our bikes with tires bulging under the pressure of over a hundred pounds of crazy Canadian and two nights worth of supplies. To add to the adventure, my bike had only two gears since the rear derailleur gave up on me. Gear #1 was a.k.a. “gear difficult”, and Gear #2 was a.k.a. “the useless/too difficult-to-be-practical gear.”   -        We wheeled up Prince Creek Rd southeast of Carbondale, Colorado and arrived at a designated camping area early evening as a light rain and thunderclouds occupied the sky. Arriving at the site was a special relief for us as the muscular fatigue from the previous day’s 14-miler proved to add to the challenge of dragging ass, limb and pack up the washboard-ridden road beneath us. -        Despite forgetting the curry for kedgeree, the fish, egg, rice and onion mash tasted fairly amazing. The “beer” on the other hand, tasted more like apple cider.  The r