Raleigh Escape & Monticello & Mohawk 17Jun18-18Jun18

We traveled back to North Carolina for a visit with Kala's sister Karla and her husband Kevin and their kid Kyle. Our first event was the Cipher Escape room where we failed to escape. And of course we hit a cool taproom, the Raleigh Beer Garden, where I enjoyed a couple of fine local NEIPAs from NCarolina. It was a 3 level taphouse with 350 beers on tap - here's the North Carolina level.

On our way to the mountains of Virginia we stopped at Monticello, the home and plantation of Thomas Jefferson. He designed it and had it built and rebuilt though it was sold off at his death, along with his slaves, due to his being $2.5M in debt; in 1800, that's a lot of money. Yes - that's the view on the back of the nickel. We dined and drank that eve at the Capital Ale House in Harrisonburg (home of James Madison U) - $3 burger night and very good beer again - this time from VA.

The kids climbed to Mohawk 3 - cool.

Goat Patch ~ Finally 14Jan18

Kala and I finally got to Goat Patch Brewery today. Excellent. We tried all the IPAs and preferred the DIPA and the Hazy best but taste we did - 'cept for the TIPA, since that had a limit of 3 (sheesh).

No Hiding @ Tiny Desk 13Jun18

Yoho mentioned Grace Vanderwaal's likely vocal nodules "allowing" the gravel and cracks when she was 12 and won AGT, but warning of their long term effects and problems - but two years later she's still stripping those same notes but on a greater range and with better control. I dunno if she'll "make it through to the other side" but she did drop a pretty keen set on an epic show, NPR's Tiny Desk, today! It's worth a listen to update yourself on Grace as this show provides no place to hide and she's dispatches it well IMO.

Grace Vanderwaal - NPR Tiny Desk

Too, I'm tossing in the opposite - a well-produced, tightly backed, cover-song variant (darker lead in lyrics) effort from the Colbert show recently. Yeah, the kid has chops...

Grace Vanderwaal - Colbert/Clearly

Evacuating The Nest 12Jun18-14Jun18

DD sent me an alert that there was a fire near me today. Earlier in the day I search for "haze of Summit Co" to see if the prevailing wind was bringing smoke from Durango/416 into Summit - it was so I went back to routine. When going outside then I smelled something more pungent than what would results from a fire 400 miles away. I then received DD's alert and yes - Buffalo Mountain near the Nest is experiencing an uncontrolled wildfire. Here are the pics I took as I evacuated the area. The 1st was from our short road off of Ryan Gulch and the others as I left the area. I was an early evacuee and the road down the mountain was not too bad - folks were even heading back up at the time - now Wildernest and Mesa Cortina access is shut down completely and the fire is growing under windy conditions.

At least we have decent firebreaks around our areas (red arrows) - that mitigation is pretty recent and will be very handy now - fire is just on top edge of the image. Too here's evac orders withour our spot in bright green.  It's also good being close to Dillon Rez as choppers are sucking up water and dropping it while slurry bombers are also dropping retardant. I think my power and gas have been shut down as I have no connectivity to my services there - verified; see pic.

Update from afternoon briefing showed little growth in fire and effectiveness of firebreaks. Here's the 3D image of the area with fire circled in red.

Update from Wed 13Jun18 Community Mtg on the Buffalo Mountain Fire... the fire has not grown. While just 20% contained though choppers dumped water all day and slurry bombers doused the perimeter, the fire perimeter now has hose lines on all sides and is being beaten back. Some structures next to the fire are now pink from slurry and it's advised to clean it off quickly. Included is also a great pic from Summit County of the fire from above. The fire was kept 200 yards or so from structures thanks to the recent fuel breaks around Wildernest and Mesa Cortina. My power has been restored but I don't really wanna smell my fridge when I'm let back into the Nest. Cause of the fire not final but inspectors are fairly certain it was human caused.

Evacuation order was lifted today, Thu Jun 14th, at 3pm. Woohoo - comprehensively great job by Summit Co and associated responders - cooperation was apparent, speed was evident, coordination was superior, information flow was awesome - great job by the teams.

Vail Mtn Games & Vail Brewing Co & Outer Range 09Jun18

On the way back from Aspen/Gleenwood (where we spent the night after the late concert) we stopped at the Vail Mtn Games to catch some of the events. We mostly saw the ladies events but did catch the men's final in climbing, else we saw fly casting, freestyle kayaking, and of course the awesome dock dogs. The ladies in the movie are the winners. Too we caught up with Daryle and Yvette therr and shared some Pacificos. Yoho and I then headed VBC for some fine IPAs before heading back to Summit for dinner at Silverheels and them more beers with DD at Outer Range. Quite a weekend.

Vail Mtn Games (PW: GR8F1sh)

Sail 'n' Lips 08Jun18

Yoho & I launched Mon Ami today amid setbacks and successes. First as we went out I discovered the mainsail was broken and I hadn't fixed it over the winter as I'd planned - so we were gonna blow it off. Then I recalled I have a backup mainsail so wen't back out and launched. The new furler works well and the mainsail we used worked fine. While we had some doldrums, ultimately we caught good wind for 90 minutes or more before we came back to the Nest and then headed to Aspen.

We ate a a favorite Asian place in Aspen called the Brown Bear and then grabbed some beers at Aspen Brewing Company before we headed to the Flaming Lips concert. We met some major fans and were impressed with their appropriate dress for the concert at ABC. The concert was very good despite the opening act "blank" being not to our liking. The Flaming Lips have so many props and so many hits that the show was amazing. They sang all the great hits and used all the great props from pink robots to laser hands to eyeballs to unicorns and more - they played into early morning. We had a great time at BellyUp Aspen.

Jurassic Park With Yoho 07Jun18

JimY came out to Summit Co for some fun and we dropped into the Green Mtn Canyon section of the Blue River on a gorgeous day. Flows however had declined even further to 50cfs or so and fishing was slow and spooky. We did manage some fish but I lost two big cutbows when they threw my fly as I reached to net them - weird thing is that both were then caught by the tail, resulting in further battles which were ultimately lost by me. Jim caught a brown on his first outing to this wild place so that's excellent. Again there was not much bug sign really.