Back Packing

  "The Diving Board"
So I have not written in over a month and my sister has reminded me of that once again so I thought I should at least write about my backpacking trips.  I left on July 24th to California where we (my dad and nephews) stopped at our cabin for the night.  The next morning my dad went for a run and I woke up to my nephews painting the whole main floor of our cabin with eggs, flour, mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, powder sugar and who knows what else.  Not to mention them putting my phone into the "Paint."  [Which by the way, phone is now on its last limb as of today as it is split in half, hanging by  a wire.. 4 years though, not too shabby ...I want an Iphone.. haha like that will happen]  So after cleaning all that up and a little bit of fishing, we continued our journey to CA, eating at In-N-Out and dropping of the boys with mom.  I danced that night in LA and then the next night in Irvine and then stayed up the rest of the  night packing, which by the way I did not give much thought but it turned out that I had the most stellar efficient packing system. Just another little side note.  

So my dad, kyle and Brad and I start backpacking at cotton tree meadows I think on our way up to Whitney.  The night before I did not sleep much as I hiked out in the middle of the night to make some phone calls that barely went through.  I guess it was worth it.. who knows.  Anyway the first day was killer.  It was 14 miles and I was pretty tired.  Brad had a hard time the first day and then after that he did great.  The top of We made it to the top on Wednesday and were up there for a few hours as we had to wait for the whole group to get there which was not taht smart considering it is 14,495 ft.  Anyway, I packed out early on Friday to meet up with some friends and then went with them to Yosemite the next week.  Yosemite was super pretty and a lot of fun.  There was a lot of water to play in and we hiked to some pretty cool lakes and peaks including May Lake, Clouds Rest and Half Dome.  Yep so all in all over two weeks, I did not have to work and probably ended up hiking 130 + miles.  It was not entirely thrilling to come back to reality to tell you the truth.  

Anyway, so a couple of weeks ago I also decided to hike Timp with my friend Ryan.  We almost died going up the glacier but it was fun.  we saw goats and I swam in the glacier lake.

On our way out..Some lady asked if I even knew what a pay phone was.

Looking over the falls

Bouldering the last day of Yosemite.. Crazy awesome!

Hanging over the North face of half dome

Down Clouds rest and up Half Dome

Clouds Rest..we camped on top and watched the Sunset and Sunrise.  I did not sleep much, it was beautiful

Guitar Lake

Swimming in guitar lake..not the only lake I swam in.  I swam across May Lake.. very stupid!

Top of clouds rest.

Top of Whitney