Let's Talk with Mark & Michelle

It may be winter but the weather feels like spring. It's a great time to start preparing your house to sell. Michelle is a realtor with nearly 25 years experience. In this podcast, she has some things to think about if you're planning on putting your home on the market soon. 

What's the "in" paint color this year? How do you keep celery fresh in the refrigerator for a month? Just a couple ideas you'll learn in this episode. Michelle and I talk with interior designer Julia Kirkendall and restaurant owner and chef Nancy Bruce. We're on location at Studio by K/D in Tulsa. Kirkendall's new venue offers "a broad range of interactive workshops and nature-inspired experiences, while also imparting invaluable knowledge on living life to its utmost potential." Many of those interactive workshops include cooking demonstrations by Bruce who owns Lambrusco'z Deli. Today she gives us some helpful but simple food tips while making french onion soup. And Kirkendall shows us around her beautiful new design studio.

What's best? Crispy or chewy chocolate chip cookies? Michelle and I have a debate. She likes cookies that are gooey and chewy and I like them crispy. I baked some crispy cookies recently and Michelle challenged me to make ones she likes. So I did. But we needed an impartial judge. We found one. Our 8 month old grandson Jack was hanging out with us for a few days while his parents were on vacation. Perfect!

What are two favorite gifts on Valentine's Day? Diamonds and chocolates. We talk to a jeweler about the hottest gift this year and tour a chocolate factory.

Michelle and I usually hike in our national parks in the summer and fall. As we ended 2023 and began the new year we visited Estes Park, Colorado and nearby Rocky Mountain National Park. Hiking in the winter brings on a different set of challenges, namely the weather. It's cold and icy and snowy. But if you love to hike and explore, you make it work. We hiked up to Dream Lake, and later to Emerald Lake, which are around 10,000 feet elevation in the Rockies. And this time of year, all the lakes are frozen.  Our hike there and beyond to Sky Pond a few summers ago, when temps were in the 90's, was one of our hardest hikes ever. But boy it was sure beautiful! Would it be just a beautiful in the dead of winter?  We also run down our top 5 toughest hikes over the years. The hike to Sky Pond is definitely one of them. What other hikes are on our list? Come along on our adventure to find out.

Michelle has loved to fish practically her entire life. Only recently has she picked up fly fishing. And she's hooked! Every time we go to either Glacier or Grand Teton National Parks she packs her fishing gear with her, an Orvis rod and Simms waders and boots. Once again this summer we booked a guided trip down the Snake River in Jackson Hole, with the help of our friend Tom O'Brien. He set us up with Chip Hodlmair of Westbank Anglers. Just like her other fishing trips, Michelle had one goal: catch just one fish. In this case, the famous Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat trout. And as always, it was quite the adventure.

The entire world is watching what's going on with Israel and Hamas right now. But do we really understand what led up to this war? And what's it like to be Israeli and to be constantly defending yourself from hate and rockets? In this episode I talk with Avner Boskey who lives in the Beersheba region of Israel and oversees Final Frontier Ministries. It's a fascinating, informative and disturbing conversation about life in Israel with enemies at every border, and rockets aimed and often fired at their homes. I ask Avner how far his home is from Gaza. His reply surprised and astounded me. He tells me they measure distance in Israel not in miles, but how long it takes a rocket to reach them from Gaza. For Avner and his family, Gaza is 62 seconds away! 

What's it like to fish with a professional fisherman? Michelle and I met recently with Fred Roumbanis on Oklahoma's Lake Tenkiller to fish for small and large mouth bass. "Boom Boom" as he's called,  is on the Major League Fishing circuit. I shot Michelle and Fred fishing for a November segment on American Dream TV, and we made this podcast out of it.

We visit Grand Teton National Park every year, and sometimes twice. It's our favorite national park. But we also love going up into Yellowstone National Park when we're there. We make a beeline to the far northeastern corner of Yellowstone. The Lamar Valley is wild, rugged, remote and beautiful. It's often called the Serengeti of North America because it's teeming with wildlife. We love to stay in a remote campground called Slough Creek. This year it was called the hardest reservation to get in the country. I can see why. There are only 16 sites, many of them right on Slough Creek. Bears, bison, wolves, otters, ducks and antelope are just a few of the wild things you can see nearby. It's rustic, so it's not for everyone. There are pit toilets and no water at the campsite this summer. That's because Slough Creek and the entire Lamar Valley was devastated by the floods in June of 2022. Everything was closed down that summer and there will be road construction for summers to come.  We love it here, and we'll be back!

I checked a hike off my bucket list recently. Michelle and I spent a week in Utah exploring Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. While in Zion we hiked Angels Landing. Everything I had heard and read about Angels Landing is how scary and dangerous it is. And how popular the hike has become. So popular that you have to enter a lottery drawing to get a permit. I did, and was fortunate to get one. Now the really difficult part … hiking Angels Landing! 

LIV Golf just finished a tournament in Oklahoma. The event was at Cedar Ridge Country Club in Broken Arrow. Some of the best golfers in the world teed off in our backyard ... Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson, Cam Smith, Talor Gooch, Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia. DJ won in a playoff. Lainey Wilson performed on Friday night after the first round. Michelle and I had a great time walking the course for three days and interacting with the players. And Cedar Ridge did a great job putting it on.

Many people have asked us how we get around our National Parks and get the photos and videos of the wildlife and beautiful scenery. Michelle and I still work full-time and get limited time for our adventures. So we haven't pulled the trigger yet on an RV or trailer. That'll come when we have a lot more time to explore the great outdoors.  Until then we rent. In this episode we talk to the co-owner of Moterra campervans. We met Trevor James five or six years ago when we first started renting one of his Mercedes Benz Sprinter vans in Jackson, Wyoming.  We researched the best way for us to spend a week or so in Grand Teton National Park and came up with this company called Moterra. Every year, and sometime twice a year, we rent from Moterra to explore Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. And in June we'll add Zion and Bryce to the list. Moterra began with one van in 2016 out of Jackson. Today it has 70 in seven locations around the country. It's gone from a start-up to one of the most popular RV rental companies in the country, serving thousands of people just like us every year. 

As we anxiously wait for Yellowstone to return, Michelle and I tour an Oklahoma ranch for an upcoming episode of American Dream TV. Greg Ganzkow and his wife Rachel own and run (along with their three young children) the Keystone Ranch in Osage County. And you know what? Greg looks a lot like Rip on Yellowstone!! And he told us there IS a railroad station nearby! Fortunately he didn't take us there.Greg has some great stories of what real ranch life is like, including life and death on the ranch and saving calves during minus 15 degree temperatures. Ranching is difficult, but rewarding. So many people want the lifestyle. Watch this and ask yourself, "Is this for me?

Michelle and I have gone to Grand Teton National Park so many times, we know where and when to find the wild animals. We've seen grizzlies, black bears, bison, elk, moose and more up close. Sometimes too close. This will tell you where you have a good chance of spotting these animals and the stories behind our adventures (for example, when we ran TOWARDS a bear that came through our campsite).

2022 was a year of adventure for us. In Part One, we explored Vail, Jackson Hole, Oregon and Spain. We finish out the year with our trips to Cancun, Glacier National Park and Grand Teton National Park. In each of these epic adventures Michelle and I give you our tips for a better experience. We have advice on where to go or not go in Mexico, plus how to get around and the must-sees in Glacier and Grand Teton National Parks. From our unbelievable hikes, to where and how we camp, to advise on fly fishing guides, we’ve done a lot of research. We’ve also been very successful in finding and photographing bears, eagles, bison and many other wild animals. We also realize when we need help to learn more. Michelle has become an avid fly fisherwoman, and her “frustrations” to get better led to some awesome, and sometimes hilarious, guided fishing excursions.  You don’t want to miss her “flying” fish tale. Come along as we take you on our adventures of 2022 Part Two. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. 

Michelle and I love Glacier National Park! And we hiked the Highline Trail , which is widely considered the signature trail in Glacier. Here are 8 things we think are important to know if you hike Highline. 

As we near the end of January, Michelle and I are in a vacation holding pattern. We don't have any trips planned for a couple of months. So we're taking this time to look back on 2022. It was a year full of adventure! So much adventure we're splitting it up in two parts. In part one we review our trips to Vail, Jackson Hole, Oregon and the highlight of the first half of the year, and possibly the entire year, the Canary Islands. It was hard to top that, but the second half of 2022 came close. We'll dive into that soon in part two! Hope you enjoy! Check our our Youtube Channel for the video version. We're "Let's Talk with Mark and Michelle".

It was a first for Michelle and I. For the first time in more than 25 years, we went on a ski trip to Vail, Colorado without kids. Our youngest boy, Tommy and his wife Ines, went to Miami for the holidays. Jacob and wife Mandi took their two year old Ava to Disney World.  David and Ashley have three kids (including twins) under the age of 2 and a half. Need I say anymore? So Michelle and I packed up the car and our lab Baker. It was a week of plenty of snow, lots of skiing and even the unexpected Stetson for good measure. We hope you enjoy our latest travel adventure to Vail, Colorado.

Just about every home has color issues ... some minor, others major. The walls aren't the right color, maybe the trim doesn't match, or you're just tired of the brick and need a make-over. Don't just automatically call a painter for these jobs. What you may need is a colorist. We had a minor emergency with our outdated fireplace. The brick was boring so we had a painter paint it white. Big mistake! So Michelle called a friend who's been a colorist for years. Carolyn Finch fixed the problem in just an hour! In this episode, we show you what she did for us, and how a colorist can help you with colors in your home.

Here's quick announcement that Michelle will soon be on American Dream TV. ADTV has been around for a few years, and is streaming and airing in nearly every major city. And now it's coming to Tulsa. While the central focus is real estate and the people behind it, it's more than that. ADTV is a lifestyle show. Each program will feature something or someone that makes our community fascinating and stand out.