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.

Sleeping with my brothers in the back of the truck
at the trailhead the night before we started the hike.

Hiking down in the bottom of the canyon.  Note the purple shorts.

The heaven sent bathroom.

Just after getting out of the canyon :)

Why I Want To Blog.

Okay so I’ve always thought about starting my own blog and even did make one when I was a sophomore.  That blog lasted about a week….then I just thought it looked ugly and it got old.   BUT it’s been on my bucket list awhile and I really thought it sounded like fun so here I go again.  And this time for real :)

The main reason I want to have a blog is for me to be able to record a little bit of my life down.  I’ve been pretty good at keeping up a journal and now I look back at what I wrote a couple years ago and it’s a lot of fun.  It’s kind of cool to see what I cared about enough to write down when I was 15 and how that compares to now.   Ha my first few months of consistently writing in a journal was when I was in Germany for a few months and I was seeing all of these aMAZing places but almost every entry is me talking about my friends back at home and who was mad at me and who I got along with and what boys I liked.  Dumb dumb dumb.  But I guess that’s what mattered most at the time :)  Now thankfully I’ve improved a little bit on what I want to remember about my life (although boys have stayed pretty consistently throughout my journal…somehow there always ends up being a WHOLE lot of pages about them).  

Anyways, this matters because if I’ve enjoyed writing in my journal so much, then why not a blog??  Writing this blog is definitely a good way for my family and friends to see what I’m up to since I don’t see all of them nearly as much as I want to, but it’s also just a good thing for me.  Just write down the small daily things that I sometimes overlook each day, but then look back and realize that all those moments pushed together are the things that make up my life.  So this blog really isn’t for you if you want to learn how to do something or read some funny story.  It’s not worth reading if you want something inspiring because I’m definitely not that.  But if you care to see what’s going on with me or just see a page or two out of my life…well enjoy :)