Saturday March 13th 2010

Our second day of backpacking and our last day in Colorado.

We woke up pretty much at the crack of dawn, 6:30, and started making breakfast so we could get headed out on the trails. Breakfast was oatmeal and I mixed some trail mix in with it, mmmm. We tore down our camp and set to work packing up the van, meaning we had to disassemble all the stuff in our backpacks so they were flat again and we had to find somewhere to put all our clothes and the tents and stuff. This was a little more difficult than when we first did it but somehow, by the grace of God, we managed to get it all shoved in there.

We then set off on our second day of hiking. We didn't hike nearly as much as we did the day before, only about a half mile to Bear Lake and then we took a ton of pictures and goofed around. We were all so comfortable and goofy around each other and so we got a lot of cool pictures. But then we had to head down the mountain and leave the beautiful Estes Park. It was sad to head out and leave the mountains and everything, but it was an adventure and a trip I will never forget.

When we got back down the mountain we went to a souvenir shop and then went to Kelly's to change into our van clothes. That same herd of elk apparently decided to follow us because there were a ton of them just chilling out in the middle of the road outside her apartment, with people yelling at them trying to get them to move. We said our goodbyes and headed down the mountain and began our trek back to Michigan.

We were all really hungry and it was decided that we should go to Golden Corral since it was a buffet and would have anything anybody wanted. Our group was so tired and hungry that when we got food we just went nutso, I can only imagine what the other people thought of us. A massive group of girls that looked bad and smelled bad and were eating food like we hadn't seen it in forever, but it was pretty much the first time we'd had some good food all week.

After dinner we got back in the car to continue on our trip back home. The ride home was a lot different than the ride there because now we knew each other and we were able to have real conversations about we had learned and what we enjoyed while we were out there.

Besides hiking in the morning it was a pretty uneventful day full of driving. But it was still a really good day