Bozeman, MT

After another all day/all night champion driving sesh by Team Zinger we find ourselves in Montana at long last. Our fabulous host Holly Mumford had an amazing drink concoction called a Moscow Mule waiting for us as soon as we arrived (which again turned out to be close to midnight). We crashed on the couch shortly after that but not before meeting Dan, Holly's boyfriend and neighbor (how convenient!). Dan, as luck would have it, is an awesome chef at a restaurant downtown so the next morning we went down for brunch. Ceviche and flatbread with mimosas! A great way to start our Montana adventure!

Back at Holly's we got a daylight tour of the surroundings and met the rest of the neighbors, Dillon and Derek and got ready for the cookout/volleyball tournament that was scheduled for the evening. Holly and her neighbors share an awesome little yard that includes a garden, a garage/workshop where people make glass art, build guitars and wooden drums, paint, and make full scale dinosaur skeleton replicas (no joke- the guy's name is Dino Mike and he drives a car that's license plate says T-Rex!). There's also a sand pit volleyball court, a bonfire area complete with a smoker grill and even a stream!

Holly's puppy Jockomo got most of the attention during the afternoon. He's less than a year old but already knows some good tricks and is shaping up to be a true key player! Holly's friends Chris and Courtney showed up and we had some epic volleyball!

Today Holly and Dan both had to work. We got the van all cleaned out and organized and got ingredients to make a stir fry. The next couple of days are going to be good ones!

Salt Lake City, UT: Partyin' with Chuck

Fear not world, the Zinger is alive and well! The guys over at the Foreign Aid did an amazing job and we simply can't thank them enough! After a hug and some reorganizing we were back on the road headed several hundred miles to Salt Lake City to party with Chuck Mumford, fellow Vermonter, extreme skier, and founder/CEO of Pit Viper Sunglasses (.com). Our adventure was back on!

Utah was one hot desert. And while we were happy to have the van back it took a bit of getting used to. Our rental car(s) had spoiled us a little. We were now going 20 mph slower, with the noisy wind whipping in through the open windows, no AC, and back to getting blown all over the road being passed by everyone and their grandmother. We were however pleasantly surprised to find that our new used engine took us up the highway hills at 40 mph not 35. Yeah that's right! Wanna race!?

We were scheduled to meet Chuck at a party up in the mountains of Park City and we drove all day and into the night. The van drove like a champ, somehow some way making it up some of the longest and steepest hills of our entire journey. We got lost a few times and had to continuously coordinate with Chuck for accurate directions. Up at 9,000 ft the Zinger was having a hard time breathing the thin mountain air and we almost thought we weren't going to make it. We eventually navigated some dirt roads in the woods and found ourselves at an epic mountain house rager! It was almost midnight at this point but the party turned out to be worth the wait. We met up with Chuck, met a bunch of other Vermonters and even ran into Ned, an old friend from Burlington! There was a bonfire and an awesome band playing. And come to find out one of the owners of the house (and guitar player in the band) was none other than our friend Max whom we had met in Massachusetts. He was Christy's (White Barn Farm) cousin! Talk about small world!

In Utah beers are only 3.2% alcohol (or something like that, we heard several stories) and we were party favorites with our growler of IPA from Colorado and our 'full power' Budweisers! We, along with Max and Chuck, were the last to go to bed at 3:15 in the morning and when we awoke we got to see our beautiful surroundings in the daylight. The mountains of Utah are gorgeous!

The van was slow to wake up but we eventually made it back down to the SLC, driving past endless bikers, Mormons and outdoor enthusiasts.

We got an exclusive tour from Chuck of the Pit Viper warehouse/office/factory and he assembled a new pair for us on the spot! We then took a ride in his new '86 Mustang to an awesome Mexican food spot to get some burritos and chimichangas to fuel up for the next leg of our journey. 

We're now cruising through Idaho en route to Bozeman, Montana to spend some quality time with Holly, the other Mumford. We won't get there til late tonight but we'll be hanging out in Big Sky Country for the next few days. Onwards!

Castle Rock, CO: Casa De Riner

We arrived in Castle Rock Monday night and now that we're about to leave we can safely say the past 3 days have flown by!  Hanging out with Jim, Betsy, Andrew, and Kyle is always a blast (Erin is in Nicaragua but we'll see her in August at the Lake Ontario family reunion).  In our short time here we've played lacrosse, basketball, pool, Nintendo Wii... GOLF!  We made burgers, filled our growler up with beer, ordered buffalo wings, watched hockey, ate ELK STEAKS, watched more hockey. We even found time to do some house cleaning and plant a bunch of flowers!  We also drove 3 new vehicles and even though they weren't rentals we'll just go ahead and call them rental cars #5, 6, and 7.

A Kim and Andrew creation!

Both Andrew and Kyle are currently attending golf clinics and somehow someone jokingly suggested that we should all go golfing.  When Betsy informed us that she had a group coupon for 9 holes of golf (with carts included!) it was settled- we would go golfing!  Kyle was already booked doing something else (who knows maybe it was golf clinic) but luckily Andrew had a friend who was also named Kyle so we invited him to stand in.  For Kim, this would be her first time playing anything other than miniature golf (which she claimed she was pretty good at).  Curt had been a few times but not in several years and he was accustomed to a rule that allowed players once per hole to throw the ball instead of hitting it with a club.  Andrew and Kyle had been recently learning about golf but had never stepped foot on a real course.  This was going to be fun!  We all drove out to the local course in Betsy's Audi (car #5) and split a bucket of balls at the driving range for practice.  The driving range had 2 floors which was pretty exciting in itself and a sign of good things to come.  For either not knowing much about golf, or having never played, or having not played in a while, everyone did really good!  No one made par on any of the holes but we all had some pretty good shots.  Curt chipped one in on the very first hole.  On one hole Kim made it onto the green in one shot.  Andrew hit a few that went so far we couldn't even see where they landed.  And Kyle only lost his ball twice and didn't hit a single car!  After our awesome round we had some beers and buffalo wings (no beers for the kids but Curt would go on to consume more wings later that day).

Get ready to golf!

Car #6 was Jim's Chevy Tahoe, which we drove (with a trailer) back to the house from Home Depot.  We brought back a work bench table and an assortment of plants that we put in pots on Jim and Betsy's deck.  It was a fun project and was the first time we got to get our hands in the dirt since leaving the Bug.  Lucky car #7 was a sleek and superfast Audi A7 that Jim had on loan.  We took it into town to pick Andrew up from Tae Kwon Do and we can definitely say this is the best car we've driven on this trip if not ever (the Zinger is not a car, it's a van- totally different).

Tomorrow we head back to Grand Junction to pick up our revitalized van.  Rental cars no more!  It's been fun driving so many different cars but we'll be happy to be back in our home.  Once we reunite with the Zinger we're immediately on the road again, heading northwest to Salt Lake City to spend a night with extreme skiing hero Chuck Mumford.  Hopefully Franken-Zinger is up for the task!  By Saturday night we aim to be even further north, in the great state of Montana where we'll stay with Holly Mumford (Chuck's sister and our good friend) til we have to head back to California for the High Sierra Music Festival.  Looks like our unplanned Colorado vacation is about to end and it's back to business as unusual!  See some more pictures riiiight here...

Boulder, CO

Well it's been a few days since our last post so you know that means we've been busy having fun!  We finally got a rental car on Friday that could take us to Boulder, a black Mazda 2 (zoom, zoom).  Our 4th rental in the past week, this one was pretty fun to drive.  And at 40 mpg and only $20/day we couldn't be happier!

Curt and our latest (and hopefully our last) rental car.

We made our way out to Boulder to visit our friend Caleb.  Him, his girlfriend Maggie and his cousin Dave have an AWESOME apartment that we stayed at Friday night til Monday.  Friday night we celebrated our long awaited arrival with PBRs and the biggest pizza we've ever seen (2 full feet in diameter!)

Caleb and Kim

The next day Caleb and Maggie had a wedding to go to so we killed some time by hiking around the Flatiron mountains area.  It was a beautiful day, 80˚ and overcast which was much appreciated after the several days of 100˚ sunny weather in Grand Junction.

The Boulder Flatirons

We hit up the grocery store on the way back and Kim got to do some cooking.  It seems like we haven't cooked much food in quite some time which is very odd for us as we both love to cook.  Having a full kitchen to use was like heaven!  Saturday night we watched game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals.  The game ended up going into overtime so after the 3rd period we caught a bus and went to a bar downtown to finish the game.  The Bruins were scoring the winning goal just as we walked in.  Oh well. With that out of the way it was time to celebrate Dave's birthday and dance to a really good band.

Maggie, Caleb and us @ The Lazy Dog!

We witnessed an awesome thunder storm from the roof of the bar and experienced downtown Pearl St. - designed by the same dude that created Church St. in Burlington!  It was a bit surreal, we thought we had seen a place in Aspen that reminded us of Church St. but this Pearl St. was almost a mirror image!

Pear St., Boulder.  Feels like home!

After a fun night on the town everyone was taking it easy the next day and/or calling out of work...  We  drove up to Denver to see Kim's cousin Kyle play in a lacrosse tournament (he's such a little lax bro! Go KYLE!) and then returned to Boulder to be lazy and watch movies.  Caleb and Maggie somehow found the energy to go mountain bike riding.  After a relaxing night we hit the road and are now in Castle Rock, CO, staying with Kim's aunt and uncle.  We'll be here til the van gets fixed which should be either Wednesday or Thursday.  The fun never stops here in Colorado, we've only been here in Castle Rock for a few hours and we've already gotten a lacrosse lesson from Kyle, a tutorial in Google Earth flight simulator from Andrew, and Betsy is encouraging us to go golfing!  Kim even went on a 3 mile run!  We've put some of our pictures from our Coloradoing adventures on Facebook.  Check em' out!