Yes, I am dancing around my living room. My flight to Japan just cost me $41.74 and 60,000 miles. wAHOO! I will be flying out on the morning of August 1 arriving in Tokyo a measly 31 hours later! Nothing like wasting two days on a plane. I guess I'll have to take a few laps around the plane just to stay alive, but then I'll be 15 hours ahead of you suckers.
sayonara
Waking up at 4:30 after drinking beer and whiskey around the campfire was easier than I was expecting. Actually, I was already awake (from the singing wood nymphs, but thats another story) when Chessie blasted me with her headlamp, "Morning Sunshine".
Mt Yale was a 30 min drive away and it was a good thing to let my stomach have a little time to digest the breakfast burrito. I didn't know it yet, but I was going to need it. The trail is absolutely beautiful. It's all uphill but it weaves around in the pine forest following a stream up. There are the most bizarre holes drilled in the rocks in the trail, I have no idea why someone went to so much trouble to put them there. There were so many flowers along the trail! Oi. The camera was getting its macro workout this morning. The ridge at treeline is the most beautiful spot I have ever been on a 14er. Weathered dead trees just below the ridge. Grass and flowers everywhere. And the view of nearby peaks. Oi.
But that's were things started to get ugly. My stomach was not happy about last nights whiskey and I was starting to get that altitude fuzziness in my head. The switchbacks to the summit were brutal with loose rock and my poor form was really starting to show. I wanted to power up the hill but it wasn't going to happen today. If I'd gone any faster than crawling my power up would have been a power purge. Oi. The summit was a brief flurry of photos before we started back down. This seemed like heaven to me, my stomach issues went away, my headache went away. But Chessie and Sandie didn't fare so well, blister breaks were happening more and more often. The discovery of the day was back at the trailhead 12 hours later. We had hike 11.5 miles round trip instead of the 8 miles we were predicting... No wonder we were pooped.
The first time hiking at Wild Basin with Sandie was a mosquito infested nightmare for me. She seemed pleased that I was along to keep the mosquitoes at bay however. We agreed to come back and hike up to Ouzel Falls sometime. I hope she's not mad, but I decided to hike up here on my own since my time in Colorado is growing short.
The wild flowers were amazing! The trail was bordered with flowers of every shade and size. And where there are flowers there are butterflies. I must have been out at the right time on the right day because there were butterflies everywhere. So naturally I went tromping about after them trying to get some photos.
So we'll get up there next time Sandie.
Finally, the hot air balloon ride! After a year and a half of rescheduling due to weather we got on it and rode! You missed out Doy... Our pilot was a crazy Swede, who thought skimming the houses over the golf course would be heaps of entertainment. I've never seen so many folks scampering about in their bathrobes to take a photo. But then, how many times have I hovered 10 feet above their house... Every time that crazy Swede fired the burners I thought the top of my head was going to melt. The landing was interesting, we put down in a marsh between some power lines... I told you he was crazy. Apparently we were running low on fuel and he wasn't confident that we had enough to clear the lines.
And then mixed berry crepes at the Huckleberry, does a morning get any better?
Posts
All Comments
