Paul went to Las Vegas for 3 days for a crash course/ overview of the accounting firm McGladrey. He got to have an inside view of what it would be like to work there, he did a lot of networking with the employees, and he got to see the major differences between the auditing side of accounting, and the tax side. Apart from all of the "work" that was getting accomplished, Paul did go bowling, went to dinner several times, and did a fun service project.
Meanwhile, back in Montana, I went with my family on a backpacking trip. Every year they go on one in various parts of the Western United States. This year we chose a hike that was near Bozeman, Montana. After the hike we would drive about 30 miles to Livingston Montana for our Blatter family reunion.
Our hike started on Monday July 23rd and we planned to hike out Friday the 28th. When all of us arrived at the trailhead and put on our back packs the clouds looked like it was going to rain soon. About 20 minutes into our hike lightning started striking all around us and the thunder began shortly thereafter. About fifty minutes into our hike it started to downpour like crazy. Because we had started our hike around 4:30, we figured it would be a good idea to start looking for a place to camp. We found a small campsite meant for maybe two tents, but it was all we could find. Somehow we managed to stuff 5 tents into a tiny site. The whole time we were setting up tents it was raining hard. We had to hold up our rain flys over our tent in attempt to keep as much water out as possible. After all was said and done, my tent only had about 1/2 and inch of water sitting in the bottom. Thankfully we were prepared with a few small towels to dry out the tent. After we all got our tents set up it stopped raining (how ironic), but we realized that we had left a bunch of things back in the car. Since the trailhead was only 1.5 miles-ish away, my cousin, little brother and I decided to take an evening jog back to the car. We got back to the car no problem, but on the way back to camp, we just happened to stop running for a minute to look around and we saw a baby grizzly bear about 10 yards away from the trail. First thought was cool a bear, quickly followed by baby bear = mama bear = trouble. We kind of took off running and didn't stop for a while.
The second day of our hike was pretty gruesome. It was all up hill. We had a huge elevation climb and it wasn't super fun. We did find a pretty neat water fall that we stopped at, but other than that it was just hill after hill, climb after climb until everyone was ready to crash. We finally got to the lake we wanted to camp at, but we found a sign saying "No camping near lake" frustrated and tired, we decided to hike a little ways to the next lake. It wasn't that far to the next lake, but we had another steep climb to get there. Finally we got to the upper lake and found a good camping spot.
Day three was sort of an adventure day. We kept our campsite from the previous day as a base camp and just hiked up to one of the other lakes. We hiked out several miles and found the lake, but it was pretty pitiful. My dad wanted to hike even higher to see another potential lake, but half of our group was tired. The other half of our group (me included) went with my dad to hike a little higher. We were in a hurry, so rather than follow the trail, we basically scaled the mountain and climbed up a rock slide. Once we were at the top, we had a lot of fun rolling rocks down the hill seeing if we could make them either jump really high, or roll all the way down without breaking, (we did get a few rocks to jump 40 feet or so in the air). The view from the top was fantastic. You could see everything it felt like. We found that my dad had a few bars of cell service, so just for kicks and giggles I called Paul from atop the mountain. When we got back to our base camp it was still pretty warm outside which meant that it was time to play in the lake. Even though it was warm outside the lake was pretty chilly. I got my hair washed and my clothes washed, but I couldn't bring myself to jump in. It was just too cold.
Day four we hiked out and headed down the trail. The plan was to hike about 10 miles and camp, then on Friday we would hike out the last 3 or so miles. After singing lots of trail songs we got to the spot we figured we would camp and half our group decided they wanted to just hike the last 3 miles out and just be done with the hike. After a vote, it was clear that we weren't going to be camping in the wilderness again. We pushed on to get to the end of the hike. Five miles later (not three) we got back to the car. We were all pretty beat from pushing ourselves so far today. We got in the car and drove to a family members house in Livingston to take a REAL shower and have some REAL food. Because there were 12 of us all trying to use one shower, I had to wait about 2 hours before I got a turn. Thankfully the water was still warm! We pitched our tent in the yard and camped out on the grass for a night.
Saturday was packed full of activities. Half of the family got inner tubes and tubed the Yellowstone River. I was lucky enough to have swollen tonsils so I didn't tube the river, but I canoed it with Paul, my little brother Tallus, Dad, Mom and Kessla. We had so much fun trying to hit as many rapids as we could. My parents had to bail out their canoe a few times because of all the water from the rapids. After Canoeing was horseback riding. I chose not to ride horses because I wasn't feeling well at all. Paul had a blast running and trotting around. That evening we had a family devotional type thing. We learned more about our heritage and swapped stories and got to know our relatives a little better.Sunday morning we all went our separate ways and headed home. The trip wasn't too bad, but after the 8 hour drive from Montana, Paul and I had to drive another 3 hours to get back to Cedar City. We got back to Cedar around midnight, but driving the extra three hours was totally worth it to sleep in my very own bed for the first time in over a week!
No comments:
Post a Comment