Home (not) On the Range

After quite a long day, I arrived at my apartment in New York late this afternoon. I should not complain. My original flight was supposed to leave Montana around 7 at night, arriving tomorrow morning somewhere in the 6:00 hour. The rest of the family was leaving at 6AM and I had to go to the airport with them - so I smiled and begged and forked over some money and got on a flight this morning. Whew - I was not wanting to sit in that little airport for over 12 hours. Not my top choice of how to spend a day. But I took back my Monday and busted my way back to the east coast.

Seeing as I took over 500 pictures on the trip, I have plenty to blog about. Hopefully I will stay focused and share many of those pictures and stories over the next week. As long as the New York busy-bee monster doesn't pull me under.

As I was browsing through my pictures this evening, the following picture stood out to me.
This picture seems so relaxing after a long day. When I look at it I can almost feel the warmth of the sun as it lowers to the horizon. The light is calming and the air is clean. I played around with cropping the picture a few different ways which also made nice pictures, but I like the little bug flying away to the left. I had to leave it as it was. Enjoy this one and stay tuned for more stories from the trip!

Wild Wild West

I am in Montana! Met up with the family yesterday after a powerless night with little sleep and a long day in flight. Today we drifted over to Yellowstone National Park. I made my first venture into Wyoming, so I will have to update my "states visited" map.



We are planning on seeing Old Faithful gyser tomorrow, but I did see a lot of spewing and bubbling heat today. The first hydrothermal activity that we experienced kind of reminded me of a natural hot tub. The water was HOT! Make some coffee out of that thing!

Running?

Am I completely out of my mind? I think I may be. Sure, there are several reasons why someone may venture to call me a little crazy, but most recently it is because I have started "running". Maybe I should give myself some credit and really call in running, but I'm not quite there yet. Where did this new thing come from? Well - I think I am hanging out with the wrong kind of people. Bad influences - encouraging something like this.

Well, I bought myself some running shoes and a couple of running outfits thinking that would turn me into a runner. I must admit - those shoes are pretty nice. They feel like I am walking on little clouds compared to the nonsupporting shoes I wear most of the time. At first they almost felt like little trampolines pushing me along....of course that feeling quickly went away.

I live close to a track, so that is where the running incidents took place. I like the track so I can monitor my distance (or lack thereof). There is also a pretty nice view of Manhattan across the river from the track. I kind of like that. The first time I went running I did a little over 2 miles. I was super impressed that I made it that far. I thought surely I would die after the first lap. My body is not used to physical activity - unless you count shopping and fast walking on the sidewalks. This run left me with some pretty nice leg cramps. What is that saying about no pain, no gain? I was gaining, let me tell you.
Second attempt: was pushed to "up the anty" but that didn't happen. I barely clocked in my two miles before I could think of nothing more than WALKING back to my apartment and ordering a big pizza... which I did. :)
The legs are feeling better now and maybe I will get out there one more time this week. We'll see. I guess it would be nice to get some use out of my new shoes! Baby steps, right???