The Great Outdoors
About an hour ago, I had dirt all over my body, scratches and bruises all over myself, and my rough/blistered skin was screaming for just about any kind of lubrication. Well, the scratches and bruises are still present, and although my body still aches, its been treated to a full manicure.
I went on a camping excursion this weekend, which proved to be one of the most ill-prepared, rigorous, yet breath-taking adventures that I've been on. Ali and I left the grocery store around 6:30 to meet his friend so that we could leave by 7. Thinking that this would be a fairly relaxing trip, we packed up loads of groceries (complete with a case of beer, 2 packages of marshmallows, 6 HUGE bars of chocolate, graham crackers, a package of cookies, and several other bags of "staple" foods). My typical idea of camping involves driving to the site, setting up camp about 50 feet from the car, and having the capability to get resources from the car whenever. Little did I know, we would eventually have to hike for 45 minutes to the campsite. (I can just hear Jen and Leslie laughing right now).
When we FINALLY got to the parking lot of the forest (St. Mary's), around 8, we had to wait for a person in our party to go to the grocery store and come back. Slowly, but surely, we lost daylight as we waited for them. "This is gonna be fun," I thought to myself. At least we killed a couple of beers while we were waiting for them to get back ... maybe the cooler full of beer was a little easier to carry because of that ... actually, I take that back. So when they got back, we fumbled in the dark through the forest on a rocky, muddy, wet trail. We got to the campsite at about 10 or 11, and it didn't take long for me to crash for the night. My feet were totally brown with crud and the burning sensation in my muscles was fierce, yet satisfying.
The next day was absolutely wonderful! We started off with a brisk hike in the morning, explored the land and looked around for the remains of some old mines. After lunch and a good nap, we headed off to St. Mary's Falls to go swimming. Before the falls, we stopped off at various swimming holes along the way, played in the rapids, and took some awesome pictures. Although the water was cold, the cleansing feeling of river water was well worth the swim. At the falls, I jumped off of a cliff (probably about 20-30 feet off the ground) into an area of water that couldn't have been any wider than about 6'x10' - dumb, naive, courageous, and certainly thrilling! We even got video footage of it. I'm such a show-off. :-)
After our 2nd break of the day, this guy Ben, conjured up this fantastic fucking idea to walk/climb the side of the mountain to reach this rock peak/cliff/whatever that he saw earlier. He wanted to watch the sunset from it ... it sounded like a good idea at first. Although I was tired and didn't really wanna go, I conformed with the rest of the party and went along. So we walk up the trail and eventually realized that we would have to forge our way up the side of the mountain (apart from the trails) in order to get there. So up we went, on all fours, climbing up loose rocks/boulders and vertically making our way through the forest ... I think it was about 7:30 when we left ... we had about 1 1/2 hours of daylight left. After a heated argument about the correct route/direction to go in, among the MEN of the group (pride and testosterone do NOT fucking mix), and an exhausting climb (although, those words don't really explain what we went through), we finally reached the cliff. I'm not sure if it was worth the agony we went through, and were about to go through on the way down, but it certainly was a FANTASTIC view. At least I got pictures of it. We were on the top of a fucking mountain! Granted, it wasn't that tall, but I've never climbed a mountain like that before! (Not off the trails anyway) So I gotta give it to Ben, he had a good idea ... it just wasn't planned well, AT ALL. After about 5 minutes on the cliff, we realized that we had about 10 minutes of daylight left and an hour journey back down the mountain. If I hadn't reminded the crew that we needed to bring flashlights, either we would've died trying to find our way around, or we would've slept on that mountain-top until daylight.
I don't think I want to go through the process of writing a description about our journey back down the mountain ... its not something that I really want to remember that well. If I see you before the scars and bruises heal, you'll probably get a good idea of what transpired.
For the rest of the night, we celebrated our adventures with a fun-fest of food, alcohol, good music, dancing, and light-shows. The hike back to the cars today wasn't bad at all, of course, since we managed to consume/use a lot of what we brought out there. I left feeling completely satisfied. I made 3 new friends and became more familiar with Ali. My body still aches, buts its a good kinda ache. :-) We watched the video of our travels and munched on some food from Brooklyn's when we got back. Now, I'm just pampering my very worn out body.
I went on a camping excursion this weekend, which proved to be one of the most ill-prepared, rigorous, yet breath-taking adventures that I've been on. Ali and I left the grocery store around 6:30 to meet his friend so that we could leave by 7. Thinking that this would be a fairly relaxing trip, we packed up loads of groceries (complete with a case of beer, 2 packages of marshmallows, 6 HUGE bars of chocolate, graham crackers, a package of cookies, and several other bags of "staple" foods). My typical idea of camping involves driving to the site, setting up camp about 50 feet from the car, and having the capability to get resources from the car whenever. Little did I know, we would eventually have to hike for 45 minutes to the campsite. (I can just hear Jen and Leslie laughing right now).
When we FINALLY got to the parking lot of the forest (St. Mary's), around 8, we had to wait for a person in our party to go to the grocery store and come back. Slowly, but surely, we lost daylight as we waited for them. "This is gonna be fun," I thought to myself. At least we killed a couple of beers while we were waiting for them to get back ... maybe the cooler full of beer was a little easier to carry because of that ... actually, I take that back. So when they got back, we fumbled in the dark through the forest on a rocky, muddy, wet trail. We got to the campsite at about 10 or 11, and it didn't take long for me to crash for the night. My feet were totally brown with crud and the burning sensation in my muscles was fierce, yet satisfying.
The next day was absolutely wonderful! We started off with a brisk hike in the morning, explored the land and looked around for the remains of some old mines. After lunch and a good nap, we headed off to St. Mary's Falls to go swimming. Before the falls, we stopped off at various swimming holes along the way, played in the rapids, and took some awesome pictures. Although the water was cold, the cleansing feeling of river water was well worth the swim. At the falls, I jumped off of a cliff (probably about 20-30 feet off the ground) into an area of water that couldn't have been any wider than about 6'x10' - dumb, naive, courageous, and certainly thrilling! We even got video footage of it. I'm such a show-off. :-)
After our 2nd break of the day, this guy Ben, conjured up this fantastic fucking idea to walk/climb the side of the mountain to reach this rock peak/cliff/whatever that he saw earlier. He wanted to watch the sunset from it ... it sounded like a good idea at first. Although I was tired and didn't really wanna go, I conformed with the rest of the party and went along. So we walk up the trail and eventually realized that we would have to forge our way up the side of the mountain (apart from the trails) in order to get there. So up we went, on all fours, climbing up loose rocks/boulders and vertically making our way through the forest ... I think it was about 7:30 when we left ... we had about 1 1/2 hours of daylight left. After a heated argument about the correct route/direction to go in, among the MEN of the group (pride and testosterone do NOT fucking mix), and an exhausting climb (although, those words don't really explain what we went through), we finally reached the cliff. I'm not sure if it was worth the agony we went through, and were about to go through on the way down, but it certainly was a FANTASTIC view. At least I got pictures of it. We were on the top of a fucking mountain! Granted, it wasn't that tall, but I've never climbed a mountain like that before! (Not off the trails anyway) So I gotta give it to Ben, he had a good idea ... it just wasn't planned well, AT ALL. After about 5 minutes on the cliff, we realized that we had about 10 minutes of daylight left and an hour journey back down the mountain. If I hadn't reminded the crew that we needed to bring flashlights, either we would've died trying to find our way around, or we would've slept on that mountain-top until daylight.
I don't think I want to go through the process of writing a description about our journey back down the mountain ... its not something that I really want to remember that well. If I see you before the scars and bruises heal, you'll probably get a good idea of what transpired.
For the rest of the night, we celebrated our adventures with a fun-fest of food, alcohol, good music, dancing, and light-shows. The hike back to the cars today wasn't bad at all, of course, since we managed to consume/use a lot of what we brought out there. I left feeling completely satisfied. I made 3 new friends and became more familiar with Ali. My body still aches, buts its a good kinda ache. :-) We watched the video of our travels and munched on some food from Brooklyn's when we got back. Now, I'm just pampering my very worn out body.