Steamboat Springs

If I were a skier, this is a place I'd spend winters. The town is great too -- its really a year-round haven for all kind of sports, especially the kind of sports who can afford multi-million dollar vacation homes. But I digress. The real reason we are here is participate in the Big Dig. No, its not another version of the big tunnel project in Boston, but its a participation activity in which the participants get to push dirt around with a bulldozer, or dig a ditch with a big excavator. (Hey, don't knock it until you try it. Its a lot of fun.)

Anyway, after watching similar equipment move dirt outside my office window for most of a year, my staff at MCM thought a gift certificate to Dig This, in Steamboat Springs, would be an appropriate retirement gift. Or maybe they were hoping I'd find a new career. Dig This is the brainchild of a New Zealander who had a lot of fun using this type of equipment when he was building his own home. He thought "heck mate, if I'm having so much fun, why not set up a sort of theme park with earth moving equipment." (I'm not sure New Zealanders say 'mate', but NZ is close enough to Australia that I thought it seemed appropriate.) So he did. Dig This was even featured on the CBS News show Sunday Morning a while back.

So this morning Penny and I got to dig ditches at Dig This. Funny, she wouldn't do this kind of work at home, but maybe we need a bigger piece of equipment. It was a lot of fun. Maybe I will start a new career.

And the waterfall picture is Fish Creek Falls, just outside of Steamboat, as the locals call it.

We move to Denver tomorrow to visit friends. Then its off to Arches National Park in Utah.