Winter!

Winter has arrived in a fury!  Today we are getting our first major snow storm of the season.  Last year by November 17th we already had a three foot base of snow.  Winter is getting a late start this year, but his storm is making up for it.  It has been hammering hard for 4 hours now, and we have about 7+ inches of snow in the parking lot.  

The snow camera is live on our website now!  Check it out here.  Today has been windy, so it only shows that we have 5 1/2 inches.  When we get more snow, we will be able to put up the snow screen.  Then it'll be more accurate.  

If you are on snapchat, you should be following me for live updates:  @venusfairies ~ of course I mix in snaps of our cat Otto and cooking...  Life on the Mesa!  

Our summer and fall went by quickly!  We have been working hard on upgrading the cabins.  A few cabins now have new(er) mattresses.  We painted some exteriors, interiors, and added some new quilts and blankets.  Have you ever bought 150+ new towels?  It is expensive!  Even with a discount. But it is a nice amenity for our cabin guests to have all new fluffy towels!  Also somewhat new is supplying our guests with soaps and shampoos.  We used to tell people to bring their own personal soaps, but now we have some!  We are trying to make it so that the only thing you need to bring is groceries.  

Here you can see how we painted the bathroom in cabin 6.

In cabin 8, I redid the bathroom with pallets.  It turned out so amazing!  I pulled apart pallets, cut, sanded, stained, and polyurethaned the wood before putting it up on the walls.  The texture is great, and each piece of wood soaked in the stain differently, so even though each piece had the same stain, it turned out so varied.  

The next project is to use pallets in cabin number 10.  If you have stayed in cabin 10, you know that it needs a little updating.  We plan on putting pallet wood on the walls where the terrible pink wall paper is.  The terrible green garden wall paper is safe.  It's so bad that it is great!  At least for now....  

Here's your before picture.  Keep posted for an after picture!

We are filling up with reservations for the winter!  Make sure to book your cabin and snowmobile tour soon.  We are already sold out for New Year's Eve and a few weekends in February.  Hope to see you this winter!!

Winter 15-16

Well it's March, and we have been having quite a winter!  December through February it snowed about 3 feet a week.  We were constantly digging out.  This winter we have had over 360" so far!

This is the road leading up to the cabins!  They do a great job plowing, but when it's coming down in buckets, it's hard to keep up.

The sunsets this winter have not disappointed!

I got to operate big red!  I am now a master snow blower.

Jeff pushes snow around with the snow cat. 

At the beginning of the winter we decided to keep the center pavilion open to guests for the grill and a fire pit area.  It got used quite a bit too!  We save all of our cardboard and then use it to burn a big bright fire!  On New Year's Eve, we invited all the guests to a pot luck and fire.  It turned out really great!!

We dug a snow bench into the hUge snow pile Jeff had made with the snow cat.

This year we got our permit snowmobiling.  Jeff has been guiding groups with their own snowmobiles and also people who come up for the day that rent our snowmobiles.  The Grand Mesa has 800+ square miles of terrain.  Most groups take a guide for the first day, get some good ideas, and then ride the rest of the week on their own.

This is the winter of El Nino.  The meteorologists named this El Nino cycle Bruce Lee.  We jumped on board with that and put a little Bruce Lee figure on our snow stake and got a life size card board cut out!  There was a meteorologist from Denver 7 news that came and interviewed Jeff for a story on El Nino.  They ran a story the other night and plugged us as "Thunder Ridge Mountain".  So if you're wondering where that is, it's here, it's us!  Some of the footage they used was from a customer that stayed with us, he had a drone!

We also had a friend move out from Chicago to live with us.  Cameron is taking on some of our carpentry projects.  If you have stayed with us before, you know that some of the cabins were remodeled before we bought them.  They have built in bunk beds, but there were no ladders.  Now each bunk bed has a ladder!  I had to figure out how to pull the mattress down, make the bed, and put it back up, because I was not about to climb up there to make the beds!  Tricky tricky.

In Cabin 7 we put a lofted bed in the bedroom.  Just another way to maximize the space a bit.

More projects coming this summer!

Cameron and I have been exploring the cross country ski trails quite a bit (Ok he has explored much more than I have).  There are some trails right across the street from us in a non motorized zone.  The trails are kept up nicely, and they are very well marked.  The Grand Mesa Nordic Council has a great trail system throughout the Mesa.  We are trying to reach out to more of the cross country skiers in the area to make sure that they know they can stay with us!  Since we are right on the border of the motorized and non motorized zones, there's no reason that both groups cannot get along!  And we don't currently have a large lodge, so most groups hang out in their cabins.  Just sayin, come stay with us!

It's the end of March, and we have been getting hit with some spring snow.  The conditions are still great!  So come visit all through April!!