ann!e.: Starry Nights and Bug Bites.

So last week my dad decided to take my little brothers and 2 of my cousins on a backpacking trip down to southern Utah. My dad was telling me a little about it the day before and, in a moment of feeling adventurous, I took off a day at work and decided to join in. That feeling to try something hard went away about an hour later, but I had already said I was in and had a couple free days, so I went :) And now that I’m back, I guess it’s safe to say that I had a pretty good range of experiences from enjoyable to not so much…

First of all the not so fun:

· 30 miles of hiking under a hot sun…definitely wore on me after 3 days.

· My face that’s peeling pretty bad since I got home :( For some reason my nose is the first thing to always peel and at the beginning of every summer, I can always count on getting a bright red nose at least once.

· Horse flies. Thankfully they left me alone while I slept, but by the time I was done hiking, I had somewhere between 10 and 15 bites on each leg and every one itched like cRRazy.

· Peeing in the wilderness. Not a fan.

· Being the only girl. I think I’d prefer having the moral support of someone understanding the things that make backpacking trips a little more difficult for a girl (note previous bulletpoint).

And the little better stuff:

· 30 miles of hiking under a hot sun. K I have to put it on the good list too because I got a fairly good workout and not a half bad tan.

· Getting to see a REALLY pretty canyon and slide down rocks in the river that were kind of like mini waterslides.

· Introducing my dad to Justin Beiber in the car on the way down. I don’t think he really warmed up to the Ludacris sections yet, but ya know I don’t think he half minded the chorus :)

· My brother’s short shorts. Jon thought it’d be funny to wear these bright purple short shorts the whole hike and, for most of the trip, nothing but the purple short shorts. He borrowed them from his friend (who bought them from the DI), and while I think that’s TOTALLY disgusting, it was pretty entertaining to watch other people see him and almost immediately avoid eye contact :)

· The bathroom down at the bottom of the canyon. Once you hike a good 10 miles down the canyon, there’s this bathroom sitting in the middle of the canyon. It was clean and had no smell. I don’t know how in the world they got that thing down there, but I’m not going to lie it was probably my favorite part of the whole trip.

· Sleeping under the stars with my little brothers and talking until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.

· Talking with my dad as I hiked and also getting to just sit and talk with my dad one night for about an hour while he massaged a sore muscle out of my foot. If that’s not love I don’t know what is :)

So while there were definitely some ups and downs in there, I think it ended up being a pretty good trip. Even doing the hard things still ended up being okay because I kind of like proving I can be a man and rough it out if I have to :) And after a couple days with my dad and brothers, I think I realized even a little more that I’ve got one pretty dang good family.