Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Plenty of sweat and tears...

I'm still pretty sore today, but I'm starting to feel better. Hottubbing last night definitely helped!

The hike was definitely worth the pain! It took us about 4 hours to get to the lake. There were a few sections of the trail when I honestly thought I wasn't going to make it, and yes, there was some crying involved…hence the title of this post. But, thanks to Jason, I made it! I really don’t think I would’ve been able to had it not been for him.

The last mile felt like the longest mile of my life. It really felt like we should've been at the lake at that point...and we actually started to wonder if we had taken a wrong turn. Finally we saw a clearing in the trees and there was the lake!

It was beautiful...and totally worth it! There was only one other group camping, so we had our pick of 5 campsites. We chose campsite #6 and set up camp.

Here's a picture that I'm sure you're curious about...it's a button...

...FROM MY BRAND NEW PANTS!!! Nice! Luckily, the zipper was strong enough to stay up without needing a button.

We were both completely starving...so we decided to start dinner, which included a gourmet selection of freeze dried Chicken & Rice for Jason and Pad Thai for me (please disregard the disgustingness that is this picture of me).

I must say that I was really looking forward to my dinner of Pad Thai and had to keep reminding myself along the trail, that if I just made it to the lake I would have a delicious dinner to reward myself.

This is what I ended up with...

...it tasted like Cup-o-Noodles with peanuts.

We did however, bring a somewhat more delicious dessert of Apple Crisp with us...

...it was slightly more edible that the Pad Thai.

For those of you who didn't know, this past weekend was the Perseid meteor shower. It was like nothing either of us had ever experienced before. Now I've seen shooting stars, but they're usually just a small star that happens to move really fast. These meteors were huge! We probably saw about 15 or so before we went to bed. The best one was burning blue with a long tail behind it...it looked like it was going to crash into the hillside next to us. I wish I would have been able to take pictures of it...but even if I had, they would not have done it any justice...it was beyond words (or pictures).

I was a little nervous going to bed, as there were signs posted at the entrance to the campground that we were in “Bear Country”. YIKES!

Jason tied our food up in a tree to keep any animals (bears) from raiding our camp. This included toothpaste and other toiletries we had brought that have sweet smells, such as deodorant.

Now, let me just say that the fact that we have to put all of things that we wear on our bodies out of reach so bears don’t get into it doesn’t really calm the nerves.

Fortunately though, we didn’t hear any animals…none whatsoever. Phew. I did, however, wake up numerous times during the night thinking that I was hearing something that turned out to be nothing.

In the morning we packed up pretty early and headed out.

The hike down wasn’t really difficult, except for the area that had forced me to cry the day before... In this part the trail is about 16” wide with rocks and in some place boulders on the path itself. There is a steep drop off on one side and to top it all off, there are bushes overgrown on either side. So…you can’t really see where you’re going. Plus, the trail was slick from the dew overnight. Again, I had a moment or two where I didn’t think I was going to make it…but I did.

I don't think I've ever been so relieved to see the truck!

Here's a picture of us at the end of the hike...we were FILTHY!

All in all it was a great weekend and I can't wait to do it again...although, maybe next time we could find a trail that is a little wider than 16" and a little shorter!

You can see all the rest of the pics on Flickr!

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