2023: Our Year in Review (Part 1)

2023... what an amazing year! We experienced so many wonderful events and activities this year. From Utah's record snowfall to Keith's latest gravel race and an incredible road trip with friends, 2023 is a year that we won't soon forget.

Spending the 2022-2023 New Year with our families 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 🥳

Our 2023 started with saying goodbye to our families as we prepared to return home to Utah from our multi-week trip to Indiana. It was so nice to get to spend the holidays with our families. Our flights home were delayed, which would be a theme this year, but thankfully we could make it back home without too much difficulty.

Revamping our website and stepping back from YouTube 👨‍💻 🆕

Our website, keithandlindsey.com, got a major facelift this year. When we started our website, we chose WordPress as our blogging platform. WordPress is a great tool but requires significant maintenance and can be overly complex to work with if you aren't that technical. Because of this, our website was kind of ugly and often had broken functionality due to plugin conflicts and unexpected breaking changes when applying updates.

Towards the end of 2022, Keith investigated several options for a better-for-us blogging platform. He eventually settled on Ghost, hosted on Gloat, as our next preferred blogging platform. Keith then put together a detailed cost analysis and migration plan to prepare for the transition to Ghost.

The final result is a much better blogging experience for us and an overall better-looking website for our readers. It was a lot of work to make the transition but we feel that it was worth it. After the website refresh, we even got our first official sponsorship deal with KÜHL to review a pair of their men's hiking pants and women's hiking leggings. What do you think? Do you like the look and features of our newly revamped website? Let us know in the comments section below.

We also decided, in the interest of our free time, to take a step back from publishing so many YouTube videos. We still plan to make a few ski season videos this year but we will no longer be publishing weekly videos. The amount of effort required just isn't worth it to us anymore.

Record snowfall at Utah's ski resorts (2022-2023 season) ❄️ ⛷️

The 2022-2023 Utah ski season was one for the record books, literally. Alta reported a record shattering 903 inches (2,293 centimeters) of snowfall over the course of the season. This is nearly double our annual snowfall! 🤯 Some say that this incredible ski season is all thanks to Salt Lake City's 9th and 9th Whale. All hail the whale! 🐳 🙏

This incredible amount of snowfall made for endless powder days and the best skiing conditions of our lives. However, it also caused massive avalanches throughout the canyons which often closed access to the ski resorts.

We took advantage of these incredible conditions by skiing nearly every weekend of the season. We often skied with our local friends Brandon, Steph, Kelly, Mike, and others. We were also visited once again by our friends Chris and Doug as well as Lindsey's cousin Joe (aka CJ). While Joe was here, we even had a chance to experience winter fat biking for the first time.

Surprise visitors 👋 😁

This year, we had two surprise visitors. First, our good friend Randall drove down from Montana to visit with us. Randall used to live in Ohio. He and Keith worked together at LaRosa's Pizzeria in Harrison, OH while they were in high school. Keith and Randall reconnected when we moved to Utah and Randall was living in Salt Lake City while attending a college program. While Randall was in town, we took in a Utah Grizzlies hockey game and spent a day skiing/snowboarding at Snowbird.

Our second unexpected visitors were Keith's former manager, Dan, and his family. Dan and his family were on a road trip throughout southern Utah. They happened to be passing through Salt Lake City on their way home so we made plans to spend the day together. We went out to a nice meal with them and then took them up in the mountains to show them what the ski resorts look like. It was so much fun reconnecting with all of them.

So many amazing and memorable road trips 🛣️ 🚙

2023 was the year of amazing road trips. First, we took a long-weekend trip to Price, UT. Price is a small town about an hour south of our home. On this trip, we visited the Cleveland Llyod Dinosaur Quarry, went mountain biking, and swam in the local wave pool. This was such as fun and relaxing weekend away for both of us. Although, the mountain biking was a little more intense than either of us expected. 😱

Next, we visited Vernal, UT on the far east side of the state. We made this trip specifically so that Keith could race in the Dirty Dino Gravel Grinder gravel bike race. While on the trip, we hit some fantastic local attractions including amazing petroglyphs, Dinosaur National Monument, and Fantasy Canyon on the way home.

Finally, we wrapped up the year with our biggest road trip: two-weeks across Oregon! Lindsey has written an entire series of posts about our two-week road trip across Oregon with our friends Jason and Kristen. We spent the first part of the trip exploring the Oregon coast before heading inland to visit the Oregon interior. This trip was so fantastic and we couldn't have asked for better travel companions.

Experiencing new, local activities 🛣️ 🚙

This year, we made an extra effort to take in all of the sights and sounds of the local events in our area. There are so many fun, local activities throughout the year in the Salt Lake area. We experienced a lot of firsts for us as well as some classic events in a new way. Some of our favorite events from the year are listed below with pictures following.

Some of our favorite local events

• Cherry Blossoms at Cherry Hill Farms
• Alpine Poppy Fields
• Los Murals on Main festival
• Sunday brunch for our anniversary at Snowbasin
• Utah Symphony at Ashton Gardens
• Snowbird tram rooftop balcony ride
• Sunfish sailing on Utah Lake
• Into the Woods play at the Scera Theater
• Warren Miller: Alltime film screening

More to come in Part 2 😃 2️⃣

2023 was such a big year for us that we can't fit everything into a single post. Be sure to subscribe to our blog so that you don't miss out on part 2.

We hope that you are enjoying our look back on 2023. What were you favorite parts of 2023? Did you do anything exciting? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬