RMNP at sunset
Thunder Lake
The guys on a rest stop
I caught a fish!Ryan called me and asked me to write my side of the Rocky Mountain National Park trip, and so, here goes.
The first day we hiked in from the trail head. It seemed like it took us a long time to get going, partially because we had a hard time getting the trip permit, but we finally managed it. I think that I managed the first 1/3 of the six-mile, up-hill-all-the-way, hike quite well. It started raining part way through, but that didn't bother me too much. I had a poncho, and it was actually kind of fun jumping over the stream that had once been a trail and splashing in the puddles. However, after we stopped for lunch, I started getting really tired. For the whole rest of the hike, I was pretty much just keeping my head down, and going, going, going. It took forever. Then, when we finally got to our campsite, I started getting really cold. My feet were soaked, and even my sleeping bag had gotten wet (despite the fact that it was covered in a trash bag.) I changed my socks, and huddled up in Rob's sleeping bag. I was feeling pretty miserable at that point.
The next morning, was much better. I had slept okay, despite the fact that my toes never did warm up. I was, however, very stiff and sore. We stayed in camp for two days, and during that time, I read (I finished Oliver Twist on this trip--Good book!!), I played my Nintendo DS (until the batteries ran down), I went down to Thunder Lake and fished (I caught 2 fish!), I played cards (31 with the family, and solitaire alone), and I memorized my lines for A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was kind of a neat experience to be memorizing those lines in the woods, because for most of the play my character is lost in the woods. Reed, Rich, Rob, and Dad all went on one or more hikes during that time, but I was kind of hiked out. Mom and I also had a camping cook-off. Reed had bought several dehydrated dinners for the trip. Most of them were of the "add two cups boiling water" variety, but two of them had to be cooked in a pan over the stove. Mom went first and made brownies. It didn't go particularly well. The trouble is that it is very difficult to achieve a low heat with the kind of stove that Dad and Rob brought along. For my cooking challenge, I made "I can't believe it's sausage pizza!", for which you have to cook the crust. It actually went quite well, despite the fact that everyone else stood around giving me advice the whole time I was cooking. So, needless to say, I won the cooking contest.
The final day we hiked down from the mountain. This was a verrryyy bad experience for me. I had slept very poorly the past couple of nights, and when I woke up that morning, I had one of my back/neck aches. It was a pretty bad one, too. I just could not imagine wearing 30 pounds on my back with it already hurting this much! However, I took 4 extra-strength Tylenol, got Mom to coat me down with Bio-Freeze, grit my teeth, and started heading down. Because the trail had been all up-hill on the way in, it was all down-hill on the way out. I just started off at a pretty good clip and refused to stop until I got to the bottom. I did stop to take a couple of drinks of water, but I didn't sit down to rest once. Actually, my back did pretty well, although I did have to take off my left shoulder strap periodically when it started hurting.
All in all, it was a pretty fun trip. It definitely wasn't my idea of a fun vacation, but it was really nice to be with the family (except for Ryan *pout*), and it was a beautiful location that I could never have seen otherwise.
