New Year, New Goals, New Mexico

The New Year! New life and new goals to complete. After a tremendous year that 2016 brought, it's time to look ahead with exciting adventures to come. I curated a list of goals I plan to achieve. Living in Denver has given me a new twist of tasks to accomplish this year. Some of my goals include: hiking more mountains, voyaging to unknown territory in the Midwest, run a full marathon within twenty four hours time, practice more mindfulness techniques, and continue my passion of entertainment.


My last hour of the year ended with me sitting in a hot tub with a bunch of strangers at a house party. Once it hit midnight, we popped the champagne as balloons fell from the ceiling. It was a spectacular night with a great group of people we met through Denver Couch Surfing Crew. The next morning we woke up encouraged to start the year off right by traveling to Santa Fe, New Mexico. We packed the car and brought the dog and drove south of home. The ride there was astonishing due to all the scenic views that surrounded us. After three hours in our trip, we finally made it to the Welcome To New Mexico sign. We took pictures and stopped for lunch then continued our journey. With only an hour to go in our trip it was already dark out and started to hail hard as we were driving on a winding mountain road. We drove slow for awhile, but made it to Santa Fe safe and sound.

Down town, Santa Fe is where the GPS lead us. I was immediately galvanized by the beauty of the original architecture of the city. It has old Mexican made homes and buildings. It sincerely felt amazing to be surrounded by historic culture within a small community. We parked our car and walked around the main down center. It was very thrilling to see the neighborhood. We started to get hungry and of course went for the least Mexican thing we could get which was general style tofu. We found a delicious place called Ying Yang Chinese Restaurant. We got it to go and sat in a closed mall with our dog. We started to look for free camping grounds nearby on www.campendium.com. We discovered a site at Hyde Park. The park was only 15 miles away from the main city center. The pathway to get there was too slippery for us to initially drive on. I then attempted to drive up the icy mountain. After the second attempt, we were successful. We arrived to the spot to notice it was pitch black. There were no other cars around us and it was freezing outside.

We saw a bunch of younger people pull up a few spaces over from us. They walked around briefly, then came up to our car window and asked to borrow our phones as for they locked themselves out of their car and had no signal on their phones. We let them use ours, but unfortunately we didn't have signal either. They had no way to get back home other than walking so we offered to give them a ride to the five of them. They squeezed into our car and we started to drive them home to get a spare key. They asked what we were doing out there. We told them we were planning on camping, but it was too cold. They offered for us to camp out in their drive way. We accepted the offer! Upon arriving to their apartment, they requested we take them back to their car. So, we did and then went back to their apartment to camp out in their driveway. Instead of sleeping outside, we decided to blow up the car air mattress I bought Kim for a Valentine's Day last year. It became very helpful during our road trip to Denver last summer and was handy this time too. We blew it and covered up with lots of blankets and passed out in the driveway.

The next morning we woke up and drove back to the city center of Santa Fe. We had breakfast at Tia Sophia and walked around. Within the walk we were admiring the native culture art work displayed along the neighborhood. I eventually stumbled upon IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. I walked in asking if they allowed dogs. The front desk replied "I won't ask for your service dog card". Bailey isn't a service dog, in other words I think she was implying "Yes, I love animals bring them in!". She also informed us that the museum was free today due to the renovations taking place within the museum. Kim, Bailey, and myself all walked around this extraordinary museum. We observed the artifacts and culture. It was phenomenal being in such a neat museum. After about an hour, we left and took pictures of our trip.

It was time to hit the road and go back to Denver. We discovered another way to take to get back home that was more scenic than the way here. During our ride back, we stopped at a thrift store and I bought a nice jacket and polo for $5 all together. The drive through the mountains led us to some iconic sight seeing. Massive mountains and an old wooden bridge with a sign that said no crossing. Taos mountain is where we took the most pictures and stopped for lunch at a place called Pat's Place (Questa) that had a perfect view of the mountains through the diners window. After more than an 8 hour drive we finally made it home with a great start to our new year.


...................................................................................................................................................................

The month of January was packed with adventure. Besides our New Mexico trip. we visited Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge. It's an terrific wildlife area only 15 miles  from our apartment. We drove around spotting deer, buffalo, prairie dogs, rare birds, and more. We've also visited Botanic Gardens of Denver right after heavy snowfall. It's a beautiful sight to see being surrounded by so much nature so close to our home.



Miscellaneous: We went to go see Manchester By The Sea, Paterson, and La La Land. All fantastic films! It helped ignite inspiration in the media industry for me. We saw Purity Ring dj set at Club Vinyl. Within the first month of the year I ran 60 miles in 12 runs. One of the runs being my first half marathon of the year. I got to go to the museum of nature and science. I've been listening to Thieves Like Us new album a bunch. Lastly one of my best friends James Merrill is visiting us the first week of March so we can go to Burton Opening and go snowboarding as for he works for Burton and is awesome at making cool things happen like that.

I'm looking forward to this new year, with many goals and adventures to go after. It will be hard to top last year, but I'm optimistic about what is to come for the future.