Summer is the time when you have allot of adventures and then you spend fall catching up on them in your blog. One of my last summer adventures was a eight mile hike in the Montanan mountains... or some of them anyway. More like big hills actually, I know what a mountain is.
It was amazing. I've never been back packing before and I don't know exactly what I was expecting but this was way better. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to carry a thirty pound pack for as eight miles but I did alright. From far off all those big hills make a pretty postcard. They're all misty and purple against the morning sky and then you get so close to them you can't see them anymore. This was supposed to be an easy hike since it was my first time. I don't think our guide did his research very well. Eight miles, three thousand feet. Not bad. I"m sure me climbed more than that from all the ups and downs we took. We gained every foot at least twice. Three steps up two steps down all the way. Then there was the little detail of the trail. No one had been on it in who knows how long. We pretty much blazed our own trail for the last few miles. And there was, of corse, the thousand foot rock hill right at the end. No one remembered to bring ropes or climbing gear of any kind. My dad gets half way up, then he radios back "Some one take my picture from down there before I die." We did.
If you can pick him out I'll give you a virtual mountain goat. It wasn't that bad actually. It was worse than it looks in that picture of course but I've been told by more experienced hikers that I have no real bragging rights. I got up in one piece (all the casualties happened on the way down).
There was this deer... doe, I guess. It was the biggest fattest doe I've ever seen. The ones that live around here and eat peoples gardens are like little stick figures. This beast was the size of a horse. It wasn't shy either. I wish I had gotten a picture of it. I guess it was a little shy of cameras, though the rocks we threw at it didn't bother it a bit. Every few hours at night it could be heard snuffling around our camp. I was sleeping next to a tree so it didn't get me but I guess it stuck it's big snout into my dads ribs, right through the tent. It was a little unnerving to have it saunter on through while we made our breakfast. We took to calling it the "dumb-dumb-dumb DOE" Like Beethoven's fifth.
Our camp site was really beautiful.
(you can't actually see it in this picture. The trees on the right block it but you can see teh rocks we fished off of over there.) I has a lovely day, went fishing for the first time, climbed up another few hundred feet (cause we hadn't had enough the day before) following the stream that filled the lake we camped at, took some pictures, 
(like this one. It's really hard to make a 'w' with rock fragments so the tense is wrong now. I'm there in spirit, how bout that?) a butterfly landed on my hand and hung out there for about ten minutes.
Hiedi, you should have been there when it got dark. The stars were incredible. I found Draco and some of our other friends but then the Doe came and ousted me from my observatory. Okay, well, we could hear her stomping around and I wasn't going to wait until she found us. Wait a minute, I don't think Hiedi knows I have a blog... Maybe I should fix that...
Then we packed up and trekked back. On the way down The Rock, we sort of had to crab walk or slid on our back sides to keep from over balancing and toppling to our deaths. Dana lost the seat of her jeans. My back pocket didn't survive. One of dad's water bottles went bouncing and spinning down the hill and into the forest below. We didn't find it so it's still up there somewhere if anyone wants to earn a virtual helicopter by leading an expedition out to rescue it. After we got off The Rock, walking felt like trying to stilt on tent polls cause my knees were so shot.
The rest of the hike back went really fast. We got back to the amish bakery just before they closed and bought some very delicious sandwiches and milkshakes. It seemed so unfair to spend half the day getting our eight miles behind us and then take just a few minutes to drive the other eight miles to get lunch. It's amazing that Americans spend so much time thinking of ways to save time when we move so fast anyway we should have all the time in the world.
That sentence was probably horribly incorrect grammatically. I think it's time for Karen to stop typing.
1 comment:
Hello! I knew you had a blog, but you wouldn't tell me where it was. I thought it might have something to do with your middle name I couldn't remember. *grins* But you've saved me a lot of trouble, or my laziness has, which isn't usually how it works.
That hike sounds really neat. Montana is a cool place. I'm glad you were able to find Draco. I haven't had the opportunity to look of late.
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