Summer!

New activities abound.

In addition to moving into our Everett house, and still working on closing that thang, Jameson has made a few ski touring trips up Pilchuck this month, and I'm fully launched into summer sports for the season. I got hooked on mountain biking last summer, and this summer looks like it will include more mountain biking, as well as new activities for me such as regular trail running (CTP article here), hopefully some wake boarding and dirt biking (both of which will be totally new), and a new crossfit regimen. Whew!

Jameson recently acquired a dirt bike, and has been rocketing up mountains ever since.
No one would bet against him with any two-wheeled apparatus, or anything with a throttle on a mountain, and his new dirt bike has it all in spades. He's already right at home on the thing, and it's made me happy to see him all battered, bruised, and grinning like an idiot every night he comes home from the Walker dirt bike area.

We were debating about weather to continue the website in the summer, and decided why not.
We'll start posting pictures and stories of our more dirt-topia type summer adventues.

Powtopia trip 2010 Complete, New Adventure Begins...

Now that I'm facing the completion of this trip, I'm suddenly seeing completion as beautiful, joyful, honoring... maybe even comforting. I just watched the Julie/Julia movie, and remembered that that book is a big part of why I started the blog in the first place. Seeing that blog complete in the movie inspired me to finally tackle my own, and open up the beginning of the next adventure.

After we drove into Canada from Montana in March, a tsunami, a freak warm weather pattern, a freak Pemberton real estate market, and a very beautiful sunrise just outside of Kamloops ushered back down into the Pacific Northwest corner of the United States, down the same road where we began. This completed the loop of our trip, having driven 5500-some miles across western North America since January.

If you had asked either of us a few months ago if we planned to come back and live near Seattle, we’d have laughed and said “no way.” That’s not what we want, not our plan. Thankfully, some of my plans, plans that I have obsessed about and have been de-ter-mined to make happen, just don’t let me make them come to pass.

Choosing to go with the crazy, strange direction our life seemed to be guiding us together at the end of our trip delivered us to the door of our dream home.

A BIG dream home. In Everett. Down in the most beautiful, sunny, grassy green paradise. Where all my friends can come stay. The place my head never imagined wanting, and where my heart sings joy and love. Deep content. Who knew?

With the spirit of comfort, joy, and honoring completion, and with one last ridiculously deep powder ski day to close this chapter (Stevens Pass this morning = SICK!!), I declare the January-April 2010 Powtopia powder chasing adventure complete.

This by no means ends our snow chasing, oh no. Jameson is up in Whistler as I write this, on a big ice cap sled trip with the Everett boys. We’re just starting a new chapter together. In a much bigger snow house.

Thank you (yes, you reading this) for what you contributed to us this winter, this spring, and to this beautiful next phase of our lives. Jameson and I were shocked every day of the trip by the depth of support and generosity from everyone, near and far. I hope we were able to give something back to you as well. Please let us know if there is anything you want or need, or just come to the house! We'll be having the house warming party real soon.

All my best,

Anna Boone

(206) 595-4092

Please excuse the delay...

I'll try to finish loading all the last trip photos this week and get the last wrap up post done. We're back in Washington state, and enjoying getting ready for what looks like and awesome spring and summer of dirt and mountain biking.

Anna

Hijacking under control...?

Please excuse the rude re-directs and pop-ups you've been experiencing! Our website was hijacked there for a while, but I think we've kicked out the offending program. Thanks!

Driggs to Livingston MT

About a week ago Anna and I left Driggs in search of a new place and hopefully some more snow.  I knew that My Cousin Kendra and her family had a ranch somewhere around Livingston so we pointed the truck in that direction.  En Route to montana we passed through Island park ID, where i think I saw more sled trailers in one day than ever before in my life!  In Island park itself there's a little Yamaha/Skidoo shop that Eric from Racin' Station down in Driggs told me to stop at if I wanted to know where to ride in MT.  Mike at the Yammy shop told us about a few places we could ride around the bozeman/livingston area one of which being the Clyde park area.  More on that later.  Here's some photos.

Before making it to Livingston we actually detoured south a ways to the Chico hotsprings for a quick hot spring soak.  Chico hot springs is a really cool place where for $6.50/person you can sit in either of their two hotspring pools for as long at you want and they've got a bar window right next to one of them.  Not a bad setup.  We hung out at the bar for a beer or two and the bartender told us about this little park just down the road toward yellowstone which we could stay at for the night.  Of course we rolled in around midnight so we couldn't see how awesome it was till we woke up!

Drivin' rocking my new sherpa hoodie from Burgess customs!  I love this thing, so comfy!

Back to the story, so we rolled out of the little park we had stayed the night at in search of some sledding.  a quick Iphone (one of my favorite new toys) search for sled shops in the area led us to crazy mtn. xtreme.  Of course it was a Sunday and sled shops are never open Sundays but I figured what the hell it's our closest and only lead.  We drove over there where not only did the shop seem closed but even Clyde parks 347 residents were no where to be found.  Ok, back to the drawing boards, the crazy mtn. range was really close by off to the east just a bit.  But how do we get there?  With my head buried in the map book this red pickup pulls up next to us.  I look up thinking it's someone about to ask me what the hell I was doing here parked outside the shop, truck/sleds/trailer and all.  Instead I noticed a sled deck on the back of this truck and the guy driving was Mark who owns Crazy mtn. Xtreme with his son Cameron in the pass. seat.  He asks "hey you looking for a place to ride?" figuring that's what we were doing with all this crap with us and our Washington plates.  I couldn't have been more stoked.  Really long story short Mark and cameron took us into the Crazys and we all had an epic bloobird pow day of riding!

Following the Crazy Mtn. boys.  (I would never have found this trailhead.  It was 8 miles down a random dirt road through a bunch of fields.)

Definately not having any fun ;)


Untitled from Jameson florence on Vimeo.

Anna gettin' set to try for her first highmark

And off she went!

Untitled from Jameson florence on Vimeo.

You can't see the smile but she's having fun :)

After our ride we left in search of Kendra's house.  We had her address and I knew that she lived somewhere in livingston, but when I put it in the GPS it said the house was only 10 miles down the highway from where we were. Stoked!  Definately tired from the ride we were excited to be close to home!  Well being that there were a number of ranches out here and it being really dark out we ended up back at the freeway.  Bummer.  I couldn't get ahold of Kendra because cell service just plain sucks here so now what?  We were parked on a freeway off ramp trying to figure out what to do next when a sheriff rolls up to check on us.  Sheriff dude - "hey you guys all right?"  Me- "yeah we're just looking for our friends house.  Hey you don't happen to know Kendra do you?"  Sheriff dude - (chuckles) "haha yeah I know her, she's just back up this road!"  He gives me directions and we're off!  Back up the road to....her father in laws driveway... The officer knew almost where to send us, we thought we were at the right place and no one was home.  So we ate dinner and waited for them to come home.  About 15 minutes later I get a call, it's Kendra, sweet she must be on her way home. Come to find out I'm at the wrong house, whoops.  She directs me down the road to her house and finally we make it.  

Not a bad view from the front door.

Doggles

My cousin Kendra (who I haven't seen since i was like 5) and her whole family was super welcoming!  We couldn't have imagined to have a better time here in Montana! It turned out to be a great time to decompress from skiing the past 6 weeks and just play on the sleds/quads/tractor and hang out on the couch watching TV.  So no skiing shots for you all if you're wondering.

Shiell and Kendras new kitchen/entry way.  Anna was ready to move in!

Shiell, Kendras husband was super generous and let us take his quads out to see the ranch.  I think we got to see about 10% of the place.  

Anna on her Quad, the crazy's in the background

Moo cows

I made a slalom course out of the Pivot

I went for a solo ride the next day and shot this pano from an alpine lake in the Crazys.  

That's all I've got for you.  We've had a really good time here in Montana but I think it's about time to find someplace new to ski.  No new snow here for a couple days and nothing really on the radar.  Down south Tahoe, the Wasatch, and southern Colorado are all getting hammered right now but we want to head north and start making our way through BC.  Plus that'd be a long ways back down south so we're gonna head across the border to try and find some good back country skiing till it snows next!  We'll keep you posted.

Jameson