Chapter Three

January 1, 2005

Durango, Colorado.

We spent Christmas in Austin, Texas with Dan’s entire family. There are 16 Goddards now and we all convened on Brother Mike’s place for 3 days. After we had eaten all of Mike’s food, drank all of Tricia’s wine and generally outstayed our welcome we headed north. Dan and I managed to spend too much money in México, so we decided to pick up a few days of work.





En route we stopped by to visit Rachel's Godfather Rick and his wonderful wife Edith.

We made a pit stop in Durango to swap surfboards for snowboards and board shorts for polypropylene, and then made our way over to Wolf Creek Ski Area. Dan worked on Ski Patrol at Wolf Creek for eight years. Davey and Scott were nice enough to let him walk back into his old job for four days; they even let me teach some snowboard lessons. Flush with cash again we went back over to Durango to attend a party at Melissa and Jim Youseff’s home. Melissa is the daughter of Rose Marie, one of the Sayulita locals who terrorized us during our stay there. We decided to return the favor by classing down Jim and Melissa’s party, unfortunately we forgot that everyone in Durango goes to formal gatherings in Carharts so we just fit right in.

Last night for the New Year we attended the annual Mapel New Year’s Bash. Meredith and her family throw a heck of a party every year. Brother Pat came down from Utah to appall Meredith’s family and friends. Not to worry though, around midnight someone hid the gasoline and banned him from getting near the bonfire. Everyone escaped unscathed.


The Mapel's "cabin".

I have titled this post Chapter three. As I see it, our journey has four parts. The first was scouting and the Grand Canyon trip. Then part two was in Mexico, surfing and soaking up the sun and culture. Part three will be our winter sports chapter. Our plans are remaining fairly flexible; we intend to keep a close eye on the snow reports before committing to any one place. But for today the plan is to spend a few weeks skiing Colorado and visiting friends before heading up to British Columbia for the winter.

Happy New Year to all. If you are inspired to follow a similar path, then we hope that 2005 is the year you hit the road.


This is our niece Bridget opening one of her birthday presents. This photo was taken by our nephew Nate.