Christmas Hike

We had a wonderful hike on Christmas day up to the top of the "PC Hill" behind our house. Tom and Tracey tested their new backpack for Marin, and Joe and I got to test out our new flip video camera. We made it to the top of the hill just as the bright sun was about to set. It was a perfect hike with the exception of the last 5 minutes when Marin's hands became ice cubes!

Now we'll have the opportunity to post more videos!

Here comes Christmas!

I can't believe that Christmas is just around the corner! With our long, warm fall, it seemed so far away, but now it's nearly here. We now have snow and cold weather, and the ski resorts are finally getting enough snow for good coverage on the slopes.

Before the festivities of Christmas and New Year's consume us, I thought I'd better get another blog posted with some other events from this fall.

Our most exciting event was a trip out to Utica, IL for a Cronley family gathering to celebrate Mary's 70th birthday and Thanksgiving. It was such a treat to have all the Cronleys together! We all met at Grizzly Jack's Resort and stayed in two great cabins. The resort is adjacent to Starved Rock State Park and is complete with an indoor water park and amusement park. This provided constant entertainment for the kids (including my big kid!), as if being together with 12 cousins wasn't entertaining enough! What a wonderful reason to celebrate and be together.

Joe and I took a weekend trip down to Orlando in October. I was pleasently surprised at how much fun Disney World can be for adults! Thanks to our friends who work for Dinsey, we had great tickets and all the inside scoop on the parks. We visited Animal Kingdom, the Magic Kingdom, Epcot (where we enjoyed the International Food and Wine Festival), and MGM.

Joe got to spend a couple nights with John, Suzanne, and Clare in St. Louis after a meeting for work. We also had a fun visit from Tom and three other Navy pilots. They came to Utah and landed at Hill Air Force Base and stayed with us for the weekend. While we thought skiing might be an option, we opted hiking, since it was still to dry and warm at that time. My dad was able to prove to us that not too much has changed in Navy flight suits since the time he was in Meridian! Unfortunately for Tom (and Tracey) the trip home wasn't so fast after getting stuck in Oklahoma City.

We had a nice trip to Denver the first weekend in December for and early Christmas celebration with our close friends there. We also celebrated my parents' 60th birthdays (Dad's was in Nov, and Mom's is coming up in Jan!) with a small surprise gathering of their friends at Holly's house. We (the Brewers) are sure lucky to have so many friends that have essentially become our family! Joe and I also got to visit some of my high school and college friends.

Now we are taking care of our last-minute preparations for Christmas and enjoying all of it! We are very much looking forward to Tom, Tracey, and Marin's visit, as well as my sister and Tracey's mom. We have lots of fun activities planned, and hopefully we'll be able to keep up some blogs to share them with you all!

Merry Christmas!

Notre Dame-UCLA 2007

Kelly's parents, Kelly's sister Holly, Kelly and I went the ND-UCLA football game on October 6, 2007. Jerry and Susan went to UCLA, back in the day. It was a great time, mostly because Notre Dame won its first game of the year, 20-6. UCLA played their 3rd string quarterback and turned the ball over 7 times. We ate lunch at the "The Beach Club" prior to the game, toured a bit of the UCLA campus, and tailgated at the ND Club of LA designated tailgate area. I spoke with former ND football stars Aaron Taylor (one of my classmates at ND) and Derrick Mayes. Derrick and I had a speech class at St. Mary's together my senior year. The game was great, but I don't think Jerry, Susan and Holly would be willing to sit in the ND section at a football game in the future. Prior to ND's 2007 game, ND hadn't played at the Rose Bowl since it won the 1925 Rose Bowl against Stanford. The coaches that year were Knute Rockne and Pop Warner. You may have heard of those guys.

Our new Goddaughter

On September 9th, we celebrated the baptism of our Goddaughter Rebecca Marjorie Claire Sheridan. She is the daughter of Joe's cousin, Eric, and his wife Shallary, and she has three older sisters - Kalee, Emilee, and Elsi. We are so honored to be chosen as her Godparents, and we look forward to watching her grow!

Joe and I went out to Lander, Wyoming for a great weekend with the Sheridans. The baptism was a very nice ceremony, and Rebecca was so excited that she wanted to dive into the water and hold the candle! Shallary's parents also joined us for the baptism.

We are lucky to live fairly close (4 hour drive) to the Sheridans, and we hope to be able to visit with them often (in addition to Joe and Eric's fishing adventures!).

Labor Day Hike

As usual, we are having trouble keeping up to date on our blog! Hopefully I can get a few short entries done to catch you up on some highlights from September and October.

We went on a great hike with my family over Labor Day weekend when Holly was visiting. We hiked Bald Mountain, which is in the Uinta Mountains just east of Park City. It was about an hour drive to the trailhead. The mountain was near where Joe and I started our backpacking trip in August. Rain was threatening most of the time, but we were able to find a cove in some bushes to stay dry during the heaviest rain.

I tried to push Joe off the top of the mountain, but somehow he managed to hang on!

Wine Country with the Girls

A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to travel to San Francisco and Sonoma with my girlfriends from UVa -- Cheryl, Lauren, Danielle, and Jenn. As we all turned 30 this year, we decided we needed to do something to celebrate together. What could be more perfect than the wineries and spas of Northern California?!? We had a fabulous weekend talking, laughing, drinking wine, eating cheese, relaxing, and celebrating each other and our friendships. Although it was easy enough for me to pick up and head out for the weekend (especially since Joe was heading to Notre Dame for a football game), the rest of the girls left behind their husbands (and one mother-in-law) to take care of their babies without them. Thanks to all the guys for making this possible!

We spent 1 night in San Franscisco as we all gathered from across the country, and we set off for wine country on Friday morning after breakfast at the Buena Vista. We had wonderful clear weather on Thursday and Friday, and some rain on Saturday. This worked out well as we spent most of Saturday morning at the spa anyway! On our drive through Napa and Sonoma we stopped at several wineries ranging from small to very commercial. We worked our way north to the darling town of Healdsburg, and we stayed in a beautiful house in the hills above Healdsburg. The views of the valley were amazing!

What a wonderful weekend catching up, sharing stories, recounting college memories, and creating new memories. We are already brainstorming about where we should plan our next get-togther!

Fall Foliage

I just wanted to post a couple pictures of the beautiful fall foliage here in Park City. Joe and I went for a nice drive on Sunday to enjoy the views of the changing Aspens. We were even maybe a few days past the prime of the colors. Enjoy!

Happy Anniversary!

Kelly and I celebrated our first anniversary on 8/26/2007! Do we look any different? To celebrate we headed into the wilderness of the nearby Uinta Mountains for the weekend! We spent Friday night car camping at a campground just off of the Mirror Lake Scenic Highway, about an hour east of Park City. It was a beautiful night, we used the grill Maura gave me a few years ago for Christmas and cooked up some great-tasting steaks. Thanks again Maura! The night was highlighted by the howling of some coyotes in the distance. Kelly really didn't like that.

Anyway, we slept well that night and got up early to hit the trailhead to Amethyst Lake. Before even starting the hike, we saw this HUGE bull moose, and we knew this had the makings of a memorable adventure.

After a fairly uneventful 5.5 mile hike and three hours later, we arrived at Emerald Lake (a smaller lake a half mile from Amethyst Lake) where we decided to set up camp. After a short lunch break and some rest, we hiked to Amethyst Lake, fly rod in hand.

We enjoyed the afternoon fishing and just hanging out at the beautifully clear Amethyst Lake. The sunset was also beautiful, with the sun lighting up the peaks and the reflection in the lake.

The next day we fished at Ostler Lake and then went back to Amethyst Lake. When I fished, Kelly read her book for the most part. I even caught some fish that we cooked up for an anniversary lunch at Amethyst. However, the real fun began at about 5:30pm, once we were back at Emerald Lake, near our tent. Kelly was in the tent, as some rain was falling. I, on the other hand, just don't know when to quit and was still fishing, when I looked up to see a moose about 50 yards away from me. I literally raced back to the tent to let Kelly know and get our camera. The moose walked right past our tent and began to graze about 50 yards from our tent. As the rain began to fall harder, Kelly and I settled into another heated game of cribbage. At about 8:30pm, with the cow moose still chomping on some aspen trees, another guest arrived . . . a bull moose. Although we tried to get some pictures of the bull moose, it was a bit too dark by this time to capture it on film. Both moose continued to eat nearby as we turned out our headlamps for the night.

The next morning we awoke to find the cow moose still around, the bull moose, however, was no where to be found. After breakfast (coffee with Baileys and oatmeal), we returned to a very still Amethyst Lake for more fishing and reading. It was a very active morning of fishing, but no big catches. Kelly took a break from her book to show me up by catching this whale. We dubbed it "Moby". We then headed back to camp, packed up our things, and hiked our way back to the truck.

It was a great way to spend our first anniversary! I highly recommend it for all newlyweds, and some of you ole timers too!

Mt. Timpanogos - 11,749 feet

For many people, the end of August may mean summer is winding down and school is getting ready to start again. For us, it seems to mean we should cram in every mountain activity we haven't done yet this summer. Lucky us!!

Last Sunday (Aug 19th) we hiked Mt. Timpanogos, which is a beautiful mountain overlooking the Heber Valley, just south of Park City. The base of the mountain is near the Sundance Resort. We set off from the car about 7:45am, all prepared with our new GPS to help us map out the way (not that the trail wasn't easy enough to follow!).

The hike was beautiful along a series of waterfalls. We couldn't tell exactly where the summit was for most of the hike, but when it came into view, we knew we had a long way to go! After we rested near Emerald Lake, we crossed a boulder field and made it to the shoulder of the ridge where we could see over into the Provo valley and to Utah Lake.

The wind picked up on the saddle once we were exposed to the West side, and Joe nearly lost his favorite hat as we posed for this picture. In the picuture of the two of us, the peak to the right is the top! The last stretch of the hike was extremely windy, and we had to be very careful as the trail was mostly a rock scramble up a steep incline.

At the peak, there was a little shelter where we had lunch. Although I've never been afraid of heights, I couldn't manage sitting on the rock legde overlooking Emerald Lake because the drop-off was too steep! It was so windy that our fingers were frozen! We envied those who remembered to pack hats and gloves!

After a 20 minute rest and lunch stop, we headed back down. The wind again subsided after we got to the other side of the mountain beyond the saddle. It was a beautiful afternoon hike down. We even saw a mountain goat pearched on a cliff keeping guard over the mountain -- can you see it in the picuture? We got back to the car about 4:00pm, and the whole trip was about 14 miles. We were exhausted, but it felt great! It will be fun to look at Mt. Timpanogos a little differently now.

Stay tuned for our next end-of-summer adventure...

2007 Fishing Trip

The 2007 fishing trip to the Wind River Mountains is complete. And what a trip it was! Every year the trip seems to be a little different, and this year was no exception. Three first timers--Kyle, Jay and Ron--and two wiley veterans, Eric and me. For the first time ever, the skies rained on us--EVERYDAY! Adversity? Yes. Challenging? Yes. Fun? Most definitely.

Day 1: The hike in to our camp was the toughest ever. 12 grueling miles. None tougher than "Ball Buster Ridge" itself. We paused for a break at the top of the ridge to catch our breath and take in the breath-taking (figuratively and literally) views. Most of the hike in took place under the protective cover of a layer of clouds, which was much appreciated as it kept the temperature relatively low (70s). But at one point the clouds dropped some genuine pea-sized balls of hail! Who would have thought of hail in August? . . . Well, it happens! In the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming anyway. Speaking of anyway . . . Anyway, about 10 hours after we started our hike in, we arrived at our campsite, nestled adjacent to Lake Hobeecheechee. Almost immediately upon our arrival, the rain began. It only lasted about a half hour, then we were able to start a campfire and cook some dinner. The sustanance was much needed after that bear of a hike in. No pun intended.

Day 2: We awoke fairly stiff but more than ready to start catching some fish. After a quick breakfast, Kyle, Ron, Eric and I were ready to go find some big fish at some nearby, unnamed lakes. Jay decided to stay behind to fish Lake Hobeecheechee and allow time for his wounded heel to heal. After little success at our first two lakes, we stopped for a ten minute nap and some lunch prior to hiking a 600 foot rock wall to another unnamed lake at an elevation of 10,800 feet. While resting Kyle and I checked our resting pulses: mine was 68, Kyle's was 96! With Kyle well rested, we began our ascent to the aforementioned lake. We finally made it to the long sought lake after a brief bout with the rain. While Eric, Ron and I circumnavigated the entire lake catching just one fish, Kyle remained at the outlet. In retrospect, that decision was very wise and energy-conserving. Upon meeting back up with Kyle and with our morale as low as imaginable, the fish suddenly began to bite! First on my line, then shortly thereafter, on everyone's line! At one point, Ron, Kyle and I all had a fish. In fact, while Ron was trying to take a picture of a fish I was catching, Eric helpfully shouted, "Ron, set the hook!" Ron did set the hook and landed the fish. This hour to an hour and a half of fishing was simply spectacular! Many fish were caught. I was fortunate enough to catch the biggest fish that day, a fine birthday gift in my mind. We headed back to camp, satified and excited to exchange stories with Jay. A very slow-starting but great day of fishing.

Day 3: Eric, Ron and I headed to investigate some new lakes again. Jay and Kyle stuck around Lake Hobeecheechee and kept and eye on our camp. At Spider Lake, we found many, many, many spiders on the boulders along the westside of the lake. We also found some fish! The fishing was steady all morning. We caught some good-sized fish, especially Ron. The rain came in around lunch time and we found shelter under a large rock. This gave Eric and I time to contemplate our plan for the afternoon. The rest of the day we spent investigating some other nearby, unnamed lakes with little success fishing. . . until we got to the inlet of the lake just above Lake Hobeecheechee. We were there around 5pm in the evening, and we had some good fun catching some very big fish and trying to catch others we could see, but had trouble hooking. We ambled back to camp fairly exhausted and ready for dinner. We exchanged stories of the day, and thanked Kyle and Jay for keeping our camp as dry as possible during the rains of the day.

Day 4: We decided to pack up camp in the morning, and set out for Raft Lake. About 45 minutes into the hike, we spotted an unmarked trail that we thought was a short cut to Raft Lake. We knew it was a risk, but we took it anyway. And as Robert Frost once said, "I took the road less travelled . . . and that has made all the difference." Yes, the path was less travelled, but it saved us at least 2 hours of hiking! Yippee! We settled in at Movo Lake around 1pm in the afternoon. Kyle, Jay, and I wet our lines in the lake as Ron and Eric fixed lunch. Jay caught a good sized Cutthroat trout and some other smaller ones, but for the most part we had little luck. After lunch, we headed down stream to Raft Lake. Upon arriving at the inlet, we all waded into the water and got our lines wet. We landed some pretty good sized fish, including our first Rainbow trouts, but once again the rain hit. we headed for the trees for shelter and waited about 30 minutes for the rain to pass over. Once again we casted into the inlet and caught some more fish, but another storm on the horizon we climbed back to our camp. However, we were not successful in making it back to camp prior to getting utterly doused by another rain shower. The rest of the evening was spent eating all the food in our packs and playing cribbage in the tent as the rain continued to return.

Day 5: We headed out of camp in the morning, focused on making it to the truck! Ron and Kyle left first, because Ron was not feeling very well. His stomach was upset (a tremendous understatement). It did not take long for Jay, Eric and I to catch up to Ron and Kyle. Seeing how much Ron was hurting, I volunteered, like the Good Samaritan, to hike ahead of the group to get to the top of "Ball Buster Ridge", stow my pack, and then hike back down to carry Ron's pack for him as we hiked back up the mountain. Well, everyone has heard about the "best laid plans". As it turned out, I got lost, hiking about 55 minutes out of the way. Ron, Jay, Kyle and Eric all beat me to the top of the ridge. Eric was minutes from way from going back to search from me when I came into his view. From the top of ridge, we hiked out another 4.5 miles and finally made it to the truck! Something that couldn't come soon enough as far as Kyle was concerned. On the drive out of the mountain Eric spotted a Moose bathing in a tarn. An hour later we were celebrating in the Lander Bar (The LB to Lander locals). The fresh burgers and beer never tasted SO GOOD!

It was a great trip. Not the best fishing we've ever had. Not the best weather we've ever had. But it was very fun, and the difficulty of the hiking and the adversity of the weather gave us all a sense of great accomplishment as we reminisced about the trip over a burger and beer at The LB.

The Confederacy of Helvetia ... aka Switzerland!

Well, Kelly and I travelled to Switzerland in mid-July. We flew from SLC to the ATL then on to Zurich. Switzerland is actually officially known by its countrymen as "The Confederacy of Helvetia". In fact, many cars in Switzerland sport the bumper sticker "CH".

The green, jagged mountains were spectacular!--much different than the mountains of Utah. After landing in Zurich, we took a 3.5 hour bus ride to St. Moritz, a ski resort town in southeast Switzerland, less than a hour from the Italy border. During the bus ride to St. Moritz, I was amazed by how safe Switzerland appeared to be. I had heard that it was a clean country, but I had never heard anything about the availability of medical assistance. Every direction I looked, t

here was a red flag with a white cross in the middle, symbolizing first aid--or so I thought. Then I realized that the flag I was seeing all over the place was the National Flag of Switzerland. . . Well, I was still very confident in Switzerland's medical care.

We spent our first three days in St. Moritz. Host city of the 1928 and 1948 Winter Olympic games, the town of St. Moritz touts an elevation of 7000 feet above sea level and a population of 6000 residents. St. Moritz is a very popular ski destination for European celebrities during the winter months. During the summer it is much more quiet and less crowded. Upon our arrival into St. Moritz, Kelly and I and some friends of our from our trip to Antigua took a sail boat out for a spin on Lake Moritz. Life was good from the getgo!

Day 2 was highlighted by an afternoon trip to the top of the mountain just behind our hotel. We took 2 finicular trains and a tram to the top. The view from above was magnificent! The picture does not do it justice.

Day 3: Kelly and I and our friends from Antigua took a 4 hour hike up a new mountain across the way. But first we took a 10 minute ride on a finicular train half way up the mounain to a place called Muottas Muragl (yes, I did spell this correctly). We hiked 1.25 hours to a glacier run-off tarn (that's a tiny mountain lake, to the lay person). On our way back from the lake our friends took the JV trail, as Kelly and I tore into a very steep trail on way to the Segantini Hutte. This expedition was an idea of some friends of ours in Park City who had travelled to St. Moritz about 5 years ago. The trail was difficult, but very well maintained. We arrived at our destination The Segantini Hutte in a mere 45 minutes, and what was in store for us was well worth the effort. We were now at about 11,000 feet elevation and the temperature had dropped pretty dramatically. As we ordered lunch, a group of German men took the table next to us. One of the men pulled a wooden accordion out of his backpack, passed around some music books and started playing some German folk songs, as the rest of the group sang along. This was the highlight of our trip to Switzerland. We were eating Barley soup, drinking beer, listening to live German music on the edge of mountain, looking down on St. Moritz, the surrounding lakes and towns, and a melting glacier. "It don't get much better than this!"

Day 4: We rode a bus from St. Moritz to Lucerne for 3.5 hours. Upon arriving in Lucerne, we walked around town, got a little lay of the land. We went to Mass in this beautiful, old Church. The entire Mass was spoken in Swiss-German. Swiss-German is the main language in Lucerne and St. Moritz, but other parts of Switzerland speak French and High German. For dinner, Kelly and I and some friends from Utah found an authentic Swiss restaurant called Restaurant Fristchi. Kelly order Raclette, an authentic Swiss, cheese entre, while I enjoyed the best Beef Stoganoff I have ever eaten.

Day 5: We took a bus from the hotel, with a group from Edward Jones, to the base of Mount Pilatus. Once there, we took about a 20-minute gondola ride up the mountain and that only got us about 2/3 of the way we were headed. We then rode a tram for the last 15 minutes to the top of this mountain. We hung out at the top for about an hour, enjoying some of the best Switzerland has to offer. While on top, we also saw some long-horned mountain goats, looked through the window of a cave to see this remote church on the top of this ridge. We noticed the church on the way up the mountain and wondered how parishioners made it there every week. We figured it had to be at least a two-hour trip to get there. On the way down the mountain, we took the steepest cogwheel train in the world. It took us 50-minutes to get all the way to the bottom of the mountain. The views from this excursion were simply magnificent! Upon deboarding the slow train, we hopped on a boat back to the hotel. The entire trip took about 4.5 hours--well worth every minute! Once back in Lucerne, Kelly and I got a bite to eat at a local deli. We then found our way to a group of eight towers that were build long ago to protect the city of Lucerne. This was a do-it-yourself tour. The views from the towers were very nice as well, and Kelly tried to immitate one of the statues we saw. Joe also began wearing his new tourist hat. While making our way down from the last tower back to the city, Kelly and I accidently were both electricuted by an electric fence. For dinner we went with a group out to another great restaurant.

Day 6: We did nothing!--except some shopping, went on a run and simply enjoyed the town of Lucerne. We also did not take many pictures.

Day 7: We took a bus to Zurich, then flew to the ATL (business elite), then back to SLC. It was a LONG day of travel.

The end!



A note from Kelly: The Photo Collection Link has also been updated with the full version of our photos. There are a lot, so be prepared! Enjoy!