Reality hits hard I’ve learned. We’re back in Oxford, which is exciting, but
all of a sudden the responsibilities are pouring in, and so things like
pictures and blogs have taken a back burner.
Ben had started a blog several days ago, but time with family too precedence
(as it should!) and now that we’re in town I am not sure that he will finish
(priorities you know). I suppose I can
give him a break, since he is trying
to find a way to earn a living so we can eat.
:) I’ll see what I can do to
help. Back to the drawing board for both
of us! Jobs and a place to live to come soon, we hope.
In the meantime, though, I thought I would post a couple
things to finish up our thoughts and stories from the trail. We have SO many stories that we could
probably write a small book, so I’ll just sum up a few of the highlights of our
last few days on the trail and shortly after:
-We saw two very young bear cubs climb a pine tree (with
mama sitting hidden below). As I was
hiking I heard crashing and was hoping it wasn’t Ben falling down the
mountainside. When I learned it was a
small group of bears, I cautiously but excitedly looked on. After watching them climb, we decided that
hanging bear bags to preserve food is probably a waste of time—still a good idea
to avoid getting mulled in a tent, but we’re guessing with such climbing
skills, if a bear wants a food bag, he’ll get it somehow. Pretty impressive.
-After our crazy evening on the Continental Divide, the
monsoon weather patterns were rather good to us. In fact, overall, I think we really lucked
out on weather for this trip. Countless
times we saw isolated storms in one direction or another, but we were rarely
hit, and the temperatures stayed cool, usually between 35 and 60 or so. Hiking down into Durango was quite shocking—our
hitch took us into town to a campground, where it was a whopping 93
degrees. I wanted to go back to the
mountains…
-One of our trail friends, Bergie, lives near Denver and was
able to meet us for breakfast in Boulder once we returned. So fun!
We hope to stay connected with her and meet up when we are in the
area.
-The wild flowers were astounding, almost to the very end of
the trail. I never really appreciated
wild flowers until this trip.
-We easily found a hitch into Durango, without thumbing at
all. Tedda offered us a ride before we
even finished up the trail—we were so grateful.
She and her dog were finishing up a morning hike, and I guess we looked
like we needed a ride.
-Thanks to Carver’s pub, Ben and I both received a free
Colorado Trail Brown Ale once we got into Durango, a generous offering to those
who thru-hike the Colorado Trail.
-Ben has quite a trout story from our last night on the
trail. I hope he can write about it at
some point, but if not, next time you see him, ask him about it. It’s pretty great.
-After the trail, we decided it was time to once again
summit Long’s Peak. I forgot how scary
it is at times! It was a much different
climb than anything we were doing on the Colorado Trail. It felt good to get up to 14,000+ feet and
not feel terribly winded due to the lack of oxygen. Our bodies had adjusted to 12,000+ feet on
the trail, so a couple thousand more didn’t seem to faze us too much. What a beautiful mountain! Thanks, David, for summiting with us!!
-We’ve had several days now of eating super well thanks to
relatives in both Boulder and Oklahoma (thanks Bonnie, Joe, Carolyn, John, Jan, and Dwight!), so we’ve gained back a good portion of
the weight we lost on the trail and are feeling good. Our blisters are about gone by now, and our
backs feel much better. We feel well-fed
and ready to face the world—mostly. :)
I wish there was a way for me to transpose what we’ve
experienced into words or pictures or videos, to share the depth of the trail, but
there doesn’t seem to be a way to capture the last several weeks or put into
words how we are feeling or what we learned.
I guess my best encouragement is, if you are in relatively good health,
get out and experience the beauty God has created in the world around us. Otherwise, we’ll share the best we can! Pictures and few more thoughts to come, and
then we’ll put a cap on our posts and move into this next phase of our lives.
