The experience of jungle trekking occurred on Nikki’s honeymoon to Central America in 2005. She and her husband found themselves high in the mountains talking to a shell asking for a beer. After an hour of looking way up to the bar for assistance and lots of scratchy wire sounds, they rock-paper-scissored to determine who would climb the rocks, returning what seemed another hour later to the luke warm pool panting really hard with two cold Belikins.

Was this just a first day fluke? No…it went on like this every single, married day. You wanna eat that remember for a lifetime chocolate mousse? Go climb three hundred rock-stairs and jump over a coral snake.  In retrospect, Nicole did note suspicious stares before their romantic stroll in the jungle. It took them through a head-tall grass path, included crossing a river, and concluded with climbing a steep, wet, mud cliff to a clay dirt road with military trucks zooming by to view Nicole sheepishly waving. How about the bike ride to the nearby resort for out-of-this-world ceviche fish tacos? Hahahaha. Look out for that ocelot!  Nice ruins…are there any rock stairs by chance with ropes like in Chichen Itza? …maybe this is another post, but the quest for excitement began to creep into all of the family vacations, and the endearment factor grew.  They were hooked.

Years later and with three little boys in tow, Nicole’s husband decided (after too many requests to go skiing with his friends) that these boys will know how to ski as a life skill.  He has learned to say, “I don’t ski,” rather than “I can’t ski,” just as we say “it doesn’t speak to me” instead of “I don’t like that.”  If you haven’t ever roller bladed, ice skated, water skied or cross country skied, then downhill skiing is even harder to pick up later in life.  Nicole can’t really figure out if she really enjoys skiing either, and to finish that debate, decided her first bucket list item of her life is to do the Most Difficult.  (Completing  a Black Diamond run would then make her an official skier, so she can say she did it, then choose to switch back to her first love of cross country skiing, with hopes to wrangle her husband into a couples’ hobby.) At this time, she continues to look forward to another season of downhill, building up the skill and nerve to actually try the black diamond.

The expensive sport seeks us out like a cowboy toting his elk rifle discovering an elkstravaganza on a spring cat-trail.  Nestled in the country, the town has an aura of niceness & seclusion. The visitors are global and the Ozments really don’t mind being nothing special, because everyone else is from someplace like Iran or Venezuela. They want to know more about their world, and enjoy they the brief conversations while shuffling like cattle through the lift lines.

Friends drove many hours to visit and give big hugs like no one else, because they are like family.  They also got the Colorado giggles (without actually partaking), which would usually happen at dinner doing something like a silliest face contest. (Which seven year old Wade won doing a blank stare and drooling.)

So in the end, what was the best part about Steamboat Springs skiing with their trademarked Champagne Powder snow and tree wells? While they are not equipped to answer that question because they grew up with Wilmot Mountain where ice is a special thing, they did leave Colorado with a suitcase full of thankfulness and Smartwool. Although you can’t see Nicole’s Smartwool, she is wearing it on her fashion diary of everyday outfits on Tumblr,  TheLastDancer. They left feeling really good about family time together and having new experiences. They also skied a lot. It is so pretty it makes you cry laughing. Colorado, for sure was a trip worth taking.