A hike to remember, starring young bunny love and a wood burning oven.

Dear diary,

First of all, we missed Bruce and Katherine immensely when they left today for the wedding. Kat looked stunning wearing native american turquoise head to toe with a feather headress and bruce dashing with a classic CK tux and flea market bolo. BUT, our loss was….well our gain….. when they came home with the wedding party favor, coyote jerky. Delicious!

Our amazing host Nicole took us for an unforgettable hike through a sacred native American reservation. We saw where indian babies were made and where pocahantes first met george washington. It brought back memories of Kili. Only this time there was a bit more exploration and climbing up the rocks. Two words to describe Johnny hey on the hike…..Spider. Monkey. We ended up catching some new Mexico sunshine vs. smallpox….so there’s that.

Now, moving on to the juicy stuff: Keyea, PBJ, hot and heavy in the hot springs. Sparks were flying… Even more than sacred native American mud. Turns out iron arsenic mud is really good for rabbit skin. PB (our bunny, keyea’s lover) was in desperate need of a skin rejuvenation. Being with Keyea didn’t hurt either- haven’t seen him this happy since he and Keyea locked eyes at Stella point – a truly magical moment. We’re all just so happy to see them back together.

In other news, the ladies of kilimanjaro will be featured in a calendar coming out next year (I’m miss October and also now a framed pic by bruce’s bed). The funds will go to support the new Taco C being built on geronimo’s burial ground.

Three necessities when it comes to Sante Fe….water, shelter and a wood burning pizza oven. The Kili 8 had 6 gourmet pizzas to choose from. Pizza Quarterly was quoted as saying, “the crust is amazing, toppings are inventive, papa John and pizza the hut better watch their backs.”

It’s Randy Sitting Bull and Beanie Pueblo signing off from the golden cities casino…double down on 12 and always bet on black. Loveyoumeanit folks.

Sent from my iPad y’all

22 October, 2011 23:37

Dear blog readers

It is Saturday night and we are gathered around the fire about to roast s’mores and share stories about the day from our Kilimanjaro reunion.

Highlights from the day:
1. Keyea and Emily wear the same lulu lemon outfits which is a change from Kilimanjaro where Bruce and Katherine had matching outfits.

2. We did a hike to 10,000 ft and of course thought a jumping photo would be a great way to celebrate at the top. So in preparation Keyea decided to do a warm up jump and ended up breaking her lower 34th vertebra of her back…thus we opted against the jumping photo. Don’t worry during keyea’s pain I documented many photos with an example below.

3. We hit up a flee market in Santa Fe after lunch and walked away with some sweet vintage digs. Turns out the guy selling us the stuff looked a lot like Tommy Lee Jones and had a 23 paragraph story for each article of clothing that we would even consider buying. (note to self: this sea turtle belt with an Indian smoking belt buckle isn’t allowed in California or Mexico…or at least that is what Tommy said.)

4. We had a great dinner this evening to simulate what we ate on the mountain minus the tenderloin, sirloin skirt steak, jalapeño poppers…ok everything we cooked tonight had nothing to do with what we consumed on the mountain. Especially with the mixology drinks from the owner of soft pour.

Tomorrow hot springs, mud baths, hiking, and more arrow head hunting. Dinner menu tomorrow we will be serving up barbecued coyote and jack rabbit spring rolls.

Xoxo jhey

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We’re baaaack

So, last weekend I was in College Station for the football game, Gig Em! I ran into an avid blog follower, see below. He climbed Kilimanjaro the week before us and inspired me to bring back the blog.

Ok, so the real reason that the blog os back is that we’re having a reunion in Santa Fe and we thought y’all would all want to know about it.

So…stay tuned for all the juicy details. It is sort of like Jersey Shore (or Real World for those born before 1981). The weekend will be full of hiking, arrow head hunting, coyote chasing, Dan’s amazing drinks, soup, bread, dancing and BBQ coyotes. We’ll post pictures and updates.

We’ve missed you! (hoping to get readership back to 800)
Xoxo
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> Sent from my iPhone

Videos and Pictures…just in case you’ve missed my blogging!

Thanks to Dallas for turning into Antarctica, I have had some time to finish editing my pictures.  I also felt some pressure because I was recently mentioned in the Trinity (my high school) newsletter and my readership has spiked to 10 readers in the last few days   I uploaded some pictures to facebook, but I know a lot of you guys aren’t on facebook, so I made a little slide show.  The program I was using made me pick a song, but it was pretty tricky because for some reason it would only let me use old music on my computer, like college old.  So, you may not even want to turn on your speakers, apparently in college my music taste was limited to rap, Britney and *Nsync.  Ok, maybe not really that different than it is now!

I also uploaded some of the funny videos that we made along the way.  They are all pretty short, but a little peak into how much fun we had.  Pretty sure I wish I could go back right about now!   Not gonna lie, for sure cried while watching the Masai Village video with my favorite song playing.  Dan is working on one long movie trailer that will have a lot of great video footage, so I’ll be sure to put that up when he has it finished.

The Masai Village…

The Climb….

The Safari…

So, we were all supposed to do confessionals about why we were climbing the mountain.  You know, like Emily was climbing it to bring Chik-fil-a to NYC.  Here are a couple..

Just hiking around…Dan might not make it….

Just being dorks…this is one of those things that I watch and tell myself I am never allowed to dance (on camera) ever again!

And…the famous song they sang to us after we dominated!

A few of my favorite pictures…

Hey followers!!  It is good to be back in America!!  It has been so fun to get back and start catching up with everyone.  It sounds like you guys loved the Bl0g, and I have loved all of the attention   I now need to find something else interesting to do so that I still have something to Blog about.  I did get a lot of feedback that it was hard to tell when we were serious and when we were joking about things.  My parents did think that I was in fact fluffing the tail of a real bunny.  Come on mom and dad?!?!  Just to clear a couple things up… I do really want to ride a zebra.  I’m still waiting on someone to offer that, or at least offer a horse painted like a zebra?!  Jonathan and I did actually need a ride home from the airport on Friday.  No big deal, we just waited there for a few hours thinking someone would show up with our flowers and chik-fil-a, but were sadly disappointed when we had to settle for Cowboy Cab.  Reegs…thanks for setting that one up for us!

Our group is already working on our reunion trip, so maybe that will be the next blog post.  We are trying to figure out how to have the tonic water and chili ketchup shipped from Tanzania.  All of our meals will consist of soup and white bread!  Fancy, let me know if you have any suggestions!

I had lunch with Nicole and Jonathan yesterday and it was great to debrief about the trip and discuss what we learned about ourselves.  Some lessons I don’t think are apparent yet, but we obviously all learned that we are awesome.  ha…just kidding!  One of the things we could all agree that we learned about was mental toughness.  It is pretty crazy what you can do when you set your mind to it.  I also know that I feel more blessed than ever and have a whole new perspective on opportunity and what we each do with the opportunities we are given.  I won’t get too sappy on the blog, but call me as I am eager to talk about everything!

Nicole requested that I post some pictures, but I have over 1000, so this may take a while.  I have a lot of editing to do, I mean…how many pictures of zebras and elephants do you really need to see?!!?  Here are a few of my favorites from the climb and the volunteer portion of the trip.  I will upload the rest to kodak gallery later in the week and put a link on the blog.

Me with Nicole and Emily on day 3….oh, and peter jenkins!

Our head guide, Stephen…showing us what we were about to climb.  This was the rocky part of day 2!

Me showing what we just got done climbing…

Nicole and I so proud of our accomplishment…

The mess tent where we ate all of our meals…

Nicole and Jonathan checking out what we are about to climb…

Our tent on the last night…just a little rocky.  Let’s just say I didn’t get much sleep!

Me on summit night/morning….trying to keep warm before we start!!

Me with Dan, Emily, Stephen at Stella Peak!  The most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen!!!

Just a little view from the mountain top…

A little fist pump from the top

Me with Nicole and Reggie…post climb and post shower!

My little goat herder…

Loved this kid!

Beautiful little one…

Playing ball…

I could eat them all up!

The children at the Primary School where we talked on the last day…