Oh the joys of the great outdoors...

The great outdoors was calling our names this past weekend, so after making a thousand pounds of trail mix, we drove down with a couple friends, met up with a couple new friends in Seattle, and then all headed out to this podunk town (if you can call it a town) of Cle Elum. Ever heard of it? Yeah, not many people have. But it's pretty popular for hiking, backpacking, snowmobiling, all of those outdoorsy sports, and the mountains and forests surrounding it are incredibly beautiful. We arrived at the trail head at about 8:30pm, just as darkness was falling, strapped on our packs and hiked up two and a half miles to our campsite on a lake. It was a slightly painful experience for me since I hadn't backpacked with that much weight since the car accident, but I made it not too far behind the rest of the group into camp with no incident. The boys were troopers, packing their gear as well as the tents and stoves, so that was great! We set up camp, made a little dinner, and then fell exhausted and cold (at least I was cold, freezing to be exact) into our sleeping bags for the night. The next day, instead of hiking on with our packs, we just went out on a six hour day hike, which was great because I didn't have to use a pack (thanks, Isaac for taking one for the team and packing the weight that day). My back felt much better, and once the sun came out, I was in good spirits. Of course, everyone else was in good spirits as soon as they crawled out of their sleeping bags, but as Isaac likes to say, "Warm Becky equals happy Becky." So true. We hiked up to Cathedral Rock and scrambled to a ridge near the top, also a challenge for me and my attitude because I'm scared of heights, something Isaac found out for the first time. Oops. I must have forgotten to mention that. The view was pretty amazing, I'll give them that, but we were high up there. The rest of the day was just hanging out at camp, swimming, feeding the 'camp robber' birdies and then we packed up Sunday morning and headed home. I'll be honest, it was a challenging weekend for me with the coldness, the difficulty of packing the weight, and the heights thing, but the company we shared was great and Isaac had a wonderful time since none of those things really bother him. And when else do you get to experience the glory of not showering for three days and having the most incredible camp hair you've ever seen? I'm glad we went...and next time I'll just pack more warm clothes and not hike to the top of ridges. Easy.