Mountain Air

So, if you read my earlier post, you understand how insanely hot it is out here. I think I wrote that post on Saturday or Sunday. However, I underestimated the power of the mountains.

After church on Sunday, we went up to Mueller State Park, which is on the lower corner of Pikes Peak. The altitude was over 9,000 feet, so the breathing was intense. The snow on the top of the mountain should have clued us in. It was definitely our most challenging and intense camping time to date. The weather varied drastically from one hour to the next. We are used to camping these mountains, but nothing prepared us for this one.

The first night, we sat huddled in our tent for two hours during pouring rain and hail. It was just over 40 degrees. Forty degrees in July. Each of us had brought one long sleeve shirt and one long pair of pants, which quickly were soaked. We shivered so hard and so long that our muscles in our backs ached from shivering! The next evening, by 5:00, it was again in the low 40's, pouring, and hailing. We were in the tent. You can only play so many cards and tell so many stories before cabin fever sets in. At 8:00, it was bright outside, still pounding rain, so we were all laying in the sleeping bags with eyes wide open. Jack and Gable had headaches, probably from dehydration.

It was tough.

But we did it.

During the camping, we did do some pretty sweet hiking. We found lots of animal 'scat'. I know I've told my animal scat story some, so if you've heard this, cover your eyes.

Three years ago we camped at this same park. The Welcome Center offered a lot of animal classes for families to take. We, of course, decided to take the ones centering around animal poop, or 'scat' as they prefer to call it. We learned how to identify poop and I can give you examples if you'd like...it's actually quite interesting. I better not. (I can't believe I'm having this inner conflict as to if I should go into scat detail or not)

Anyhoo, our job was to go out and hike and identify as many types of scat as we could, a job we all took quite seriously, but none as seriously as Jonah. He decided to go one further and pick up the scat, ziploc it, and return it to the visitor center so they could verify his identification.

The next day we took a class called 'scat cookies', where we got to make fudge dough look like all of our animal scat we had collected. And, of course we got to eat it which was interesting. Yes, it was a cookie, so why was it hard to put it in your mouth??

About two years later (or a year ago), I was going through Jonah's camp which is actually the closet next to our bedroom. You guessed it, I found a box full of ziploc bags full of scat. Not the scat cookies - the real scat, neatly labeled: coyote, bear, elk, deer, dog.

Back to this year's trip: We found the coolest scat on our trail. It was made up of fur, which meant that it was a carnivorous animal, and it had a huge claw or talon in it! Wild, wild stuff.

We walked right up on a mule deer with antlers. Beautiful.

And we played hours and hours and hours of spoons and war (the boys have renamed it 'peace'). We told lots of stories.

It wasn't all bad, but it was an insanely rough camping trip.

We bailed out a day early after it began to hail and sleet. We ended up coming out of the showers to find half an inch of ice covering the ground. Yes, it was beautiful, but in no way welcome. We passed this couple coming out of the showers that was commenting on it's beauty and how great that it wasn't so hot this time of year. Blah, blah, blah. Of course, there was well over half the people there in campers, rv's, and motor homes. And some of them had satellite dishes outside! I can't say I didn't envy them, but no wonder they appreciated the weather. They could look at it from inside a frosty window, sipping hot chocolate with a good movie playing...

But soon we'll be headed home. We've been staying at Jon's brother and sister-in-law's house, complete with Hayleigh, my four-year-old niece/princess. We love staying here. The boys love it because Uncle Jeff lets them set off fireworks and had a huge flat panel tv. I love it, among other reasons, because there is a cushy bed with a bathroom that is clean, has lights, and flushes.