Sunshine Ink

Fun being on this side of the interviews. Thank you Voyage Denver for the opportunity to share!

Annie Lindgren of Fort Collins area on Life, Lessons & Legacy - VoyageDenver - Denver We recently had the chance to connect with Annie Lindgren and have shared our conversation below. Hi Annie, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so […]

I haven’t updated my Sunshine Ink social media sites in quite some time, and want to share for those interested.

All is well! This year has been a big one for change, personally. I am incredibly grateful for where I find myself today, but getting to this place has been a busy time. In prioritizing my time, ‘keeping my public social media page updated’ never makes the list. Those on my personal pages get more of a scoop.

On March 10, I made the difficult decision to put Maverick down. He was nine and had lived his very best life. He had started struggling more with pain and mobility, approaching 3 years as a tripod. The bone cancer never returned, but the heart tumor may have. He also developed a thyroid issue, and all the meds he was on made medicating him difficult. He lost his appetite and wasn’t eating much. I could tell he was suffering.

A week after Mav’s death, I had what I hoped would be my last first date. After a decade and a half of single life, I met my perfect match. We have since set off on a joint mission to live our best lives together. In May, we spent six days in Alaska. We spent six days in Yellowstone and Montana’s Paradise Valley and the Bozeman area in June. In between, we enjoy weekend adventures closer to home, most often with loved ones.

In May, we brought home a new puppy. He was born on March 23 and is an English cream golden retriever named Kenai. He is a smart old soul of a pup, and is doing awesome with everything we introduce him to. Adventure training is off to a very good start, and he is going through training to become a service dog for PTSD.

As of July, I am contracting with 5 nonprofits for grant writing and nonprofit development work sevices. I am incredibly grateful to have found my niche in the nonprofit world. Love supporting these incredible missions, and being able to do it all remotely where I can continue having good work-hard, play-hard balance.

I have pics to share, but not much motivation to spend more time on social media than I need to. The nonprofit world is keeping me busy, with these times we are living in. And, my personal life is filled with love, outdoor time, and adventure in exploring these beautiful mountain states. I have been working to shift my ‘Sunshine Ink creative time’ towards writing my first book.

Happy trails, all! 🙏💜👣

Had an opportunity to work with a photography client earlier this month, and had fun photographing farm animals, beautiful horses, and horse-lovin girls in the snow ❄️🌞🐎🐐🐖😃📸🙏🏻

Maverick and I celebrated New Years in our favorite digs, chasing northern lights, sleeping under the stars, and exploring new and interesting spaces.

Shout out to Oglala National Grasslands, in NW Nebraska, for epic dark skies, wildlife, and its own version of badlands. We had Toadstool Geologic Park campground all to ourselves. Am sure the nighttime low of 11 degrees contributed to that, lol, but it’s amazing how warm life feels when you are doing what you love. Lots of down layers and a seat heater helps!

Grateful for a northern lights sighting to finish out an epic year of northern lights. A year ago I was in Iceland, trying but not-seeing them for the first time. Since then, I spent 6 nights with them, in 4 different states/regions of the US. Grateful for this car, nailed it on the adventure vehicle upgrade, it is excellent for car camping in any conditions. I had a blast racing a train down the long snow dusted gravel road to camp, knowing if I didn’t beat it I would have to wait for it to pass. Eleanore sticks to the road! Grateful for chats with friends and family, I have so many wonderful humans in my life, it’s impossible to feel alone. I am grateful to still be doing life with the golden boy. Nothing brings me to tears quite like his happy face giving me the ‘are you coming?’ look, before excitedly hopping off in a yet-to-be-explored direction. It reminds me of all of our very best adventures. I am so incredibly grateful for this life, so full of magic around every corner. Saw 3 bald eagles on our way out.

While dog water bowl froze and stove struggled to boil water for coffee, Maverick was thrilled to have snow to roll in and I found the crisp peaceful air of the morning refreshing and beautiful. The sunrise was fantastic. Perfect start to a new year.

Happy New Years, all! In this life that is what we make of it, follow the path that your heart (or nose) desires. I am learning that it doesn’t really matter where the path leads; the magic is in the journey. 🙏🏻💜🐾👣🤩🥳

Kicked off first day of winter with a snowshoe with friends and the local wildlife. Grateful for these beautiful and peaceful northern Colorado spaces 🩵❄️🙏🏻🦊

Proud of this one! Love seeing these budding nonprofits grow with funding. Excited for another year of grantwriting for Protect The Game! They are doing awesome things for Veterans and youth sports, across the US! 💙❤️🤍⚾️🏈🏀⚽️

If you know of a veteran interest in receiving free training and equipment to become a youth sport umpire for a variety of sports, reach out to Patty!

Happy Veterans Day from Sunshine Ink! Thanking all you Veterans for your service❤️

Maverick and I walked the Veterans Day Parade in Loveland, CO, with one of the nonprofits I work for. Maverick is an old pro with parades, and the crowd goes wild over the tripawd 🥰🐾

Sunshine Ink now has 4 Veteran-support nonprofit clients providing incredible support services to Veterans, and a waitlist of others wanting my services. My dad would be proud 🦅. Love writing grants for these organizations (and their founders). Veterans are a wonderful population to serve and work with. ❤️💙🤍🇺🇸

Spent a week in Missouri, and a weekend at Lake of the Ozarks, with family and friends in the Kansas City area. Such a beautiful time of year for a visit. We saw the comet two nights in a row, over the lake. Lots of fun playing in the water, enjoying Ozarks quirky food establishments, time spent with wonderful humans, and several beautiful hikes. There is never enough time, but did make the visit to where we spread dad’s ashes. My favorite part of visiting Missouri, these days, is ‘aunt Annie’ time. Grateful for the humans that made me an aunt, and for time spent bathed in the love and goodness of family. 🙏🏻💜🍁🍂🌹

This year, I have seen the northern lights in 3 states (Utah, Colorado, & Minnesota), over 5 nights of viewing. This year I also tried to see them in Iceland and Wyoming. While I still want to see them close to the pole, where you can hear them, and see much more clearly with naked eyes, this close-to-home evening was special. It isn’t a given that the conditions will be right and sometimes you have to be patient. I was out for 6 hours.

Thursday night (10.10.24) I started in Fort Collins, after being in town for an event, and then hoping to see them over Horsetooth Reservior with friends. It was cloudy and we were close to city lights, but the faint pink hue shown through and showed up in photo.

Then, heading back home around midnight, I noticed the sky clearing and the faint spotlight like patterns in the sky. I picked up the dog, and we spent the next 2 1/2 hours driving country roads north of Wellington, from Smith Lake to Sospstone Prairie, watching the lights transforming. To see them, I had to stop and look north, and the colors are faint to the eye. But when eyes adjust to darkness I could see the faint red and green. I knew they were changing when I could see what looked like spotlights moving in the sky. And, they show up in photo because the camera can pick up more light and color waves than my eye.

Pretty cool seeing them close to home 🙏🏻🙌🏻🥰

Had the joy of my son’s company this past weekend, as we drove into the storm to explore more of San Luis Valley, Great Sand Dunes Nat. Park, did some maiden voyage 4WD adventuring, and camping along Lake Como Road. This valley is full of quirky places to visit, and stormy weather was a fun excuse to make time for exploring more of it, from ufo tower, to stupas, and an Alamosa restaurant (4th Street Grill) worthy of a return . The sand dunes were easier to traverse in cool temps after a rain, and the valley was a lovely spot to watch storms roll through. It snowed in all the Colorado mountain ranges over the weekend, making for a fun drive home seeing the big mountains covered in snow.

Love the short season where you can see snow on peaks, fall colors on the slopes, and flowers still in bloom in the foreground. Ohhhh, Colorado. Helloooo fall 😍💜🧡🏔️🍂

Sunday afternoon, to Tuesday morning, Maverick and I spent two nights, two paddles, and two short hikes, exploring more of State Forest State Park. Love this part of Colorado so much, especially dressed in fall. The colors were incredible and the humans were sparse. We camped at North Michigan Creek Reservoir with lake-front access, resident pair of bald eagles, and several incredible sunsets and sunrises.

I have Starlink now (50g mini), and an upgraded power source that leaves me feeling stress-free about having the internet on. This area is far from cell service, but when I found my perfect camp spot I was able to use Internet to book it. On Monday, I attend an hour &15min of zoom meetings with teams, doing active work projects, and didn’t have any internet glitches. It is pretty amazing! And, when I am ready to enjoy the peaceful disconnect from ‘connectedness,’ I can, by simply turn off the power. I love being able to get out into the woods, and still be able to work, and am excited to do more ‘close to home’ trips like this. My mental health is so much better when I can be outdoors all the time.

🥰😍💜🐾👣🙏🏻