Backpacking

Well, Its been a while since I have written on this thing. I guess they are kind of hard to keep up.

Well I had my 23rd birthday. I have a wonderful husband who always treats me so well. He was going to surprise me with a trip to a beautiful mountain town called Ouray here in Colorado. But just like my mother, I found out about it. He was devastated that he couldn't surprise me, but I love the planning of it so it was still fun for me.

So we took friday before Labor Day off of work. Thursday after work we packed everything up and traveled to the mountains about 2 and half hours. We got to a camp ground at dusk and so we just payed the woppin' $20 (YIKES!!!) and spent the night at a fancy campground. We woke up the next morning and packed up our backpacks and headed for the Lizardhead trail. We got there and started on our journey. We get to a fork in the road either go right to the Meadow (where we eventually wanted to spend the night) or go left to lizard head peak. Of course we decided to go up the trail, not knowing how hard it would actually be. We climbed on switch backs for a long time and finally got to the top. The view was gorgeous. But I did not want to stay up there because there was no water and storms were coming in. So we saw the meadow down below and knew we had to get down but it was very steep hike straight down the mountain off trail in dense forest. That part was pretty nerve wracking and I was very exhausted. There was a time when I thought that we would never get out and thoughts of getting lost for days and people having to come look for us were going through my mind. But the sight of coming out of the forest and seeing the meadow was the most wonderful sight of the day. It was so beautiful with all the peaks around us, and a sense of accomplishment came over me like I did it. So we set up our tent and got water and things like that. But the storms came through and we were stuck in the tent for about 2 hours. That was boring and that is when exhaustion and fear set in cause all I had to do was think about things. But once the rain let up we were able to go oustide and make a fire and things got better. That night I was sore and very tired, but didn't sleep too much. It was very cold but thanks to my mom and dad I had a wonderful sleeping bag that kept me quite warm. I could hear the coyotes howling all night too, but they sounded far away so that was ok.

The next moring was so pretty. The peaks and the dew rising from the meadow were all so neat to watch. We ate breakfast and then packed up our stuff and headed out. Thankfully, we went out the other way where we should've gone the day before and the trail was much shorter. I was sore but very anxious to get out so we booked it out of there. The sight of the car was so wonderful. I knew I had made it backpacking and I was alive and the trip was over. :-)