mountainfilm in telluride

this is the first mountainfilm that we've been able to share with a visitor and Sara dived into it head first. The festival still has another day to go but so far we've seen 26 flicks (anywhere from 4 to 80 minutes long each) on topics ranging from the climbing photography of Jimmy Chin to truck farms (seriously, only a guy from MA would think of a farm in the back of his dodge ram in Brooklyn)

We enjoyed some time down by the river between movies on the first nice weekend we've had all year.

And headed to town park for some movies under the stars with friends after the sun set with a few light sprinkles.

Chaos Cookies- sans gluten

Today I took a break from baking for humans and made some cookies for Chaos and Mayhem. It's not the first time I've made them but it's been a while and it was my first time making them gluten free. We've banned gluten flour from the house as it gives me a migraine to bake with it and Dave isn't much of a baker.
I'd love to give credit but the recipe has been in my book since at least 2006 and I have no idea where it came from. We've dubbed them Chaos Cookies and they were very well received by a tough panel of judges, Chaos, Mayhem and their friend Stella.

Chaos's Gluten Free Dog Cookies

Ingredients
1 cup flour (I used my old batch of Gluten Free Featherlight)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup peanut butter
3/4 cup milk
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix Flour and baking powder then add peanut butter and milk. Combine then roll out on floured surface to 1/4" thickness. Cut out your pups favorite shapes or keep it simple. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown. Cool before serving to your pup! Keeps best in fridge or freezer.

I've found that a simple shape makes for the best cookie cutter. We had a skinnier dog bone cookie cutter but found that the bones broke easily. I also made some triangles for smaller treats for toy stuffing.

 The judges all agreed- they loved the peanut butter flavor and the smells that came out of the kitchen. They couldn't even tell that the cookies were gluten free.

Rock on....

Saturday we loaded up into the 4Runner with both two and four legged friends and headed back out to Clay Creek for some more time climbing. The weather was immensely warmer and I'd guess that it was in the 70's plus radiant heat from the sun.


 I managed to start a hat during our drive and adventures on Saturday and finished it up on Sunday. It's fun to be back in knitting mode again especially since we've had a foot of snow fall just today...

lazy Saturdays....

We're finally able to have a lazy Saturday at campchaos. Even the pups knew and let us sleep in before we all had quality couch time. We did muster up some motivation and channeled our inner Fred as we make donuts that reminded us of dunkin donut munchkins... you can see that post here.

Hoppy Easter Ski Day

This weekend we made the trek to Summit County and had a few ski days on Copper Mountain's final weekend of the season. It also happened to be Easter weekend and we managed to keep the dogs away from the candy and Easter Bunny long enough to let the kids catch a sugar high.

Camping at the Grand Canyon

It's been a long winter without as much snow as we'd like to see so by the time the last chair fell silent we were ready to get out of town. Dave took a week and hit the east coast to spend some time with his dad while I stayed home to work and pack for the next adventure. I happen to be a very OCD packer and made a very comprehensive list to ensure our comfort for our adventure. We also packed a ton of food as my research didn't yield much for gluten free friendly dining at the park.

We loaded the 4Runner full of dogs, gear, flip flops and food and headed southwest towards Grand Canyon National Park. We had four nights booked at Mather Campground at site #308 in the Pine Loop. I'd been keeping an eye on the weather and the forecast said we were headed into warm weather.... but the first few nights were below 30. This would have been fine but our sleeping pads deflated and offered no cushion and more importantly insulation from the cool ground. We had three sleeping bags for the humans so we bundled up and dealt while the dogs had a shared bed and a few blankets. They have doggie softshells and wore those each night as the sun and temperatures dipped. Mayhem did crawl into a sleeping bag with me one night while Chaos's thicker coat served him well.

Grand Canyon is one of the more dog friendly of the National Parks and the dogs were allowed on the paved Rim trail for some great walks each day. They joined us for a sunset at Mather Point and enjoyed attention tourists across the world. Mayhem had played rough and cut a paw so he wore his Ruffwear shoes to prevent further injury to his pads. He had a lot of folks laughing at him but overall enjoyed the attention. After sunset the parking lot cleared out and we took the opportunity to play ball with the pups. We found a new light up ball which rocked Mayhem's world and allowed him to get some serious energy out at night. It made some great photos in the dark parking lot with the dog's glowing collars and the disco light ball.

We had a ton of photos from the little s6000 and from the D100 and each worked our skills a bit. We narrowed it down to the highlights from sunrise to sunset and a bit of Chaos and Mayhem.

Turtle takes a walk

How about now...any guesses on where the turtle is now?