Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Beautiful scene

by Genny

Of course it's beautiful! It's the view from the Dream Lake Overlook in Rocky Mountain National Park. What fascinated me is the lake you can see tucked in there. Is it Loch Vale, or something smaller, or something bigger? We flipped the map over about a hundred times trying to figure out which mountains we were looking at in order to figure out which lake it was. Our viewpoint was on one side of the map and the scenery options were all on the other side. Isn't that always the case- a map thats 32x22 inches and the 20 inches I need has to be split half on the front and half on the back.
This was our Saturday adventure. We decided to get a late start up Flattop Mountain. It was a lot of fun, but our high point was still 1,100 feet lower than the summit. Here's Ben deciding to turn around and head back down.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Visitors!

While we were in Joshua Tree, Matt's wife Cara, and her friend Clay came to visit us. It was sure nice for matt to get to see his wife at the half way point, and I wished Genny could have come visit as well. But she one of those things where you go to it, and they give you money for being there and doing things while you're there, so unfortunately, she couldn't. Among other things, we went for a few nice hikes. Here are some pics.









Matt looking at an old miner's camp, along the California Riding and Hiking Trail.





















Cara and Clay hiking along the same trail.





















Matt always has to climb on rocks.





















Clay reading a trail sign along the Barker Dam Trail.

Friday, March 13, 2009

I made it!




What's up, ya'll? I'm back from Joshua Tree as of 2 hours ago. I'm kinda loopy right now because we drove 22 hours straight to get home, and I took 14 of them. It was good times. J-tree was fabulous, what an amazing place. I'll be throwing up lots more pics in the coming few days, but I just wanted to get something up. I like this little picture I took of a thorny thing growing in no more than a handful of dirt in the shallow crack of a rock. I think that thing and I have a lot in common. It must be hard to grow in an environment like that, so naturally it's very tough and has developed a strong, thorny exterior. Although I guess I'm not really that tough, I tend to cry about things like only sleeping on one Thermarest because I left the other one on top of the truck and it blew away while driving. Also, I'm not very strong or thorny either. In fact, I mostly got torn up by gritty Josh cracks and donated blood frequently to a few offwidths. In fact, I may not have anything in common with this little guy, but I like the picture.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Meanwhile, back in Colorado...

by Genny
I've been learning to ski and learning to photograph. Maybe you thought I already knew how to do those things. Well yeah, I grew up skiing, but not like this. Cross country skiing to a yurt is way different than downhill at Mohawk. And you're right, I've been taking photos since I got that pink and purple camera for the trip to Germany in first grade. But now I'm learning to use my new Pentax, and that's a whole new thing!

Read all the details on Backpacker's Blog.