This summer Bub and I got to go on a grand adventure and experience something I had always wanted to do but never had the chance. A backpacking trip in the mountains. Now my family and I are avid campers and hikers but have never combined the two. Partially because of the age of our kids and partially lack of opportunity. Well opportunity knocked this year in the form of one of my good friends from church. Seems he has a lifelong friend who is a county extension agent and part time back-country guide in Colorado who has been dying to get my friend to the mountains to go on a trip. Well he and I decided what a great father-son trip it would be and recruited a couple of other buddies from church and their sons and we were off.
We took two trucks up the mountain filled with men and gear. There were ten of us all together and we had a beautiful day to start off.
Here we are waiting on the rest of our party to make last minute preparations as my good friend (let's say...Rufus) talks over a few more details with our guide.
Well our beautiful day took a sour turn. One of the trucks started over-heating on the way up and two of our party had to take them back down the mountain and hike back up. While we waited the weather turned off rather wet.
Luckily we were still in a good humor as our guide showed us this small creek that eventually becomes the Rio Grande river.
This is our starting point. We were headed to the big tall mountain in the background.
As we hiked along the weather teased us as it would appear to start breaking up only to rain more in a few minutes. The first day we stopped a lot as we got accustomed to our packs. Rufus and I joked that we could imagine our fearless guide turning to us at any point and saying," I ain't gonna lie to you guys, I'm lost and kinda scared" but he never did.
It was a great experience with breathtaking views.
Bub was holding his own on the first day.
We were very excited as we had been waiting for this for a long time. We never imagined it with rain though. We always assumed camp fires and John Denver but it don't always work like that.
Bub and a good friend. These two were the two youngest our guide had ever taken on a trip like this.
Another close friend and his son.
By late afternoon on day on the rain was pouring and the wind was getting colder. We finally had to hunker down in our tents and make the best of it. All our gear was pretty well soaked but we managed to muddle through. I should have taken more pics but at this point it was the last thing on my mind. I was feeling pretty confident that we might get snowed in at this point.
But as it usually goes the dawn turned into a beautiful day. We had not made anywhere near the miles on the first day we should have what with the vehicle problems and the weather so we re-routed our trip and started of on a gorgeous morning. We had camped at 12,500 feet elevation and we were all feeling like tried and true mountain men.
The second day was great. The weather held out most of the day, we did 15 miles which we considered a pretty fair distance and we saw a bear in the woods. Look close in the trees and you can see his head. Our guide had never seen one in the woods so you can imagine how rare a treat this was.
We saw some beautiful sites,
and had a great time
enjoying all that God has created.
Billions and billions of years? I don't think so.
We took two trucks up the mountain filled with men and gear. There were ten of us all together and we had a beautiful day to start off.
Here we are waiting on the rest of our party to make last minute preparations as my good friend (let's say...Rufus) talks over a few more details with our guide.
Well our beautiful day took a sour turn. One of the trucks started over-heating on the way up and two of our party had to take them back down the mountain and hike back up. While we waited the weather turned off rather wet.
Luckily we were still in a good humor as our guide showed us this small creek that eventually becomes the Rio Grande river.
This is our starting point. We were headed to the big tall mountain in the background.
As we hiked along the weather teased us as it would appear to start breaking up only to rain more in a few minutes. The first day we stopped a lot as we got accustomed to our packs. Rufus and I joked that we could imagine our fearless guide turning to us at any point and saying," I ain't gonna lie to you guys, I'm lost and kinda scared" but he never did.
It was a great experience with breathtaking views.
Bub was holding his own on the first day.
We were very excited as we had been waiting for this for a long time. We never imagined it with rain though. We always assumed camp fires and John Denver but it don't always work like that.
Bub and a good friend. These two were the two youngest our guide had ever taken on a trip like this.
Another close friend and his son.
By late afternoon on day on the rain was pouring and the wind was getting colder. We finally had to hunker down in our tents and make the best of it. All our gear was pretty well soaked but we managed to muddle through. I should have taken more pics but at this point it was the last thing on my mind. I was feeling pretty confident that we might get snowed in at this point.
But as it usually goes the dawn turned into a beautiful day. We had not made anywhere near the miles on the first day we should have what with the vehicle problems and the weather so we re-routed our trip and started of on a gorgeous morning. We had camped at 12,500 feet elevation and we were all feeling like tried and true mountain men.
The second day was great. The weather held out most of the day, we did 15 miles which we considered a pretty fair distance and we saw a bear in the woods. Look close in the trees and you can see his head. Our guide had never seen one in the woods so you can imagine how rare a treat this was.
We saw some beautiful sites,
and had a great time
enjoying all that God has created.
Billions and billions of years? I don't think so.
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