Sunday, July 13, 2008

Partially successful

I am home a day early because our backpacking trip did not quite go as planned.
We left Friday and after much debate decided to drive through Mountain Home....through Ketchum...to get south of Stanley to our desired "base camp". We planned on camping in our tent on Friday night then getting up early to set out for 4th of July Lake and stay the night there.
Sometimes my kids are fantastic in the car but sometimes....dear god someone kill me!!!
By the time we got to Hailey I was going to rip someone's head off and stick it down their bickering throats. (Ugh, I'm still annoyed) So, we decided to camp at the SNRA Headquarters campground and then head over Galena Summit in the morning. 4th of July Lake is a 1.5 mile hike so we could have set out pretty late and still made it.
We found a nice little camping spot, made friends with the camp host, built a fire, hung out and then headed to bed.
I could not, for the life of me, sleep. I won't get into the sordid details here but suffice to say...sometimes anxiety gets the better of me. Especially at night and especially in "bear country". And it was so freakin' cold that we ended up sleeping in the car (a tight fit in a Toyota Camry wagon) Jimmy and the kids were in the back with the seats laid down and I was wedged in the front seat.
In the morning we walked to the ranger station and asked about hikes close to town. We decided to day hike and then head home Saturday evening. We would try backpacking again when the night time lows were above 2o degrees. Too damn cold for my babies.
So, Baker Lake it was. 2.5 miles (5 roundtrip). We were a little nervous that the kids might not make it but decided to try anyway.
Let me just say...my kids are so cool. They made it 2.4 miles and then some really friendly guy gave Olivia a shoulder ride the last .1 miles because he thought she was so cool for having hiked that far. So with Jamie on Jimmy's shoulders and Olivia on the nice guy's with a dog named Max..we made it. We fished and played for about an hour and then headed back.

This conversation between Olivia and I on the way back is definitely the highlight of the trip:

"Mom, I'm feeling happy because we made it all the way to the lake. We fished and now we are going back to the car and I'm going to fall asleep."

"Do you know how I'm feeling, Olivia?"

"Yeah, you're feeling proud of us"

"That is exactly how I feel, baby."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is AWESOME! Backpacking with two little girls...you amaze me! Did you guys pack cute little one-person pots too? I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try the whole backpacking thing, but I am totally intrigued by people who do! What fun! (Oh, and I totally agree with the anxiety at night regarding "wildlife"!)

Anonymous said...

I think you would love it, Natalie. It's very "pioneer". hehe

Kathleen Lee said...

I just have one thing to say...FANTASTIC!