So last night I posted on the local Colorado SCCA Region’s solo website to start asking for input about the various areas we’re looking at moving to. I must admit, they’ve been far more helpful than I expected. It looks like if we end up in Ft. Collins there are a number of SCCA members in the area, but it also means we will likely have to drive 2-2.5 hours to get to the “local” autocross events which are generally held south of Colorado Springs.

I won’t mind the drive, at least I am telling myself that now :)

So today is our last day in Colorado. We actually are already headed home, we left Denver this evening around 9pm and shortly ago stopped in Limon Colorado for the night. It’s snowing here, and was the whole trip, so we’ll camp out here tonight and see what the roads are like in the morning.

We spent today looking around at three dressage barns south of Denver. We saw a few nice places and talked to some very good resources for Natalie. We haven’t narrowed any decisions down yet as to where we will end up, but we got a lot of good info from today’s visits.

We also went to the golf course at Bear Dance where my former boss (form 1995/1996) works as the head professional there. It was a beautiful course, though there were only two trucks in the lot due to the weather! From there we headed west, doing a little off-roading in the Envoy.

To cap off the night we went to dinner with three of my fraternity brothers, it was a great time catching up with the guys. I am looking forward to getting to spend more time hanging out with them over the next few visits to Colorado!

We’ll have some more photos and such posted tomorrow night or the next day. We’ll be getting up early in the morning and hopefully heading to St. Louis, assuming the weather is good!

So Natalie and headed off from Buena Vista today towards Ski Cooper. We barely made it out of town when we realized we hadn’t left the Schmidt’s xmas card, so we turned around and drove it back. We hand delivered theirs because it was the first one returned to us due to them changing addresses.

So we took off to Ski Cooper and made it up within about an hour, maybe less, from  Buena Vista, taking in some amazing sights along the way.

We had a blast at Ski Cooper, it’s not the fanciest or largest of places, but we hit the slopes for $75, two half day lift tickets and rental skis/boots for Natalie. It’s hard to beat that price!

We’ll have more pictures later, I think my card reader is in the car.

After a few hours on the slopes we planned to head to Ft. Collins for the night, with the intention of starting to look at horse stables tomorrow. Well, on the way out of Ski Cooper I decided I wanted to take a picture of the mountains. Fortunately for us another guy named Chris came by in his F250 and pulled us out of the snowbank I thought would be a great place to park for the picture. Needless to say I didn’t get the picture, but I did get to have some fun trying to get the Envoy out of the snow. FYI 4wd doesn’t do much in 3-4 feet of snow :D

So we’re in Ft. Collins, now, we’re going to head out in the morning and look at a few stables Natalie found online. We also need to try to hit an Autozone and get the Envoy scanned. The check engine light came on on our way to Cooper this morning. I don’t imagine it’s anything major, but we’ll see what a code scanner says tomorrow.

So tomorrow marks the beginning of our journey. We are heading to Colorado for New Years, with the intention of trying to see as much as we can, get some time in on the slopes, see some friends, and hopefully see some dressage barns out there. We’ll post updates throughout the trip, photos included!

So when we started this website a few months ago it was planned to track our move to Colorado in 2009. Well, 2009 is getting closer, and more and more we talk about the move, so it is probably time to fill you in on who “we” are.

This is run by Christopher and Natalie Hammond, currently residing in St. Louis, Missouri. You can click on either of our names to get to our individual sites, or you can visit our family site at www.horsesandcars.com.

Natalie and I have been married for just about two years now (in just over a week actually). We met online, Match.com (yeah yeah, we’re geeks, well I am), we’ve been in St. Louis the whole time we’ve been dating. I’ve actually lived here in St. Louis since 2000, prior to that I spent 4 years in Rolla, MO, about 100 miles west of St. Louis. Natalie has been in the area since 2004 this time around, spending a few years in Germany training in dressage.

We’ve both been to Colorado a few times and are looking forward to taking a few trips out there over the next months as we decide where we want to live.