5289 to 14,420 { part 1 }

Oh Labor Day weekend....you were oh'so good to us.  Just like I predicted, nothing but mountains, creeks, stretchy pants and my Hunter for miles and miles.  Safe to say we were both in wildlife bliss.

Here's a little { long winded & unnecessary } background leading up to our backpacking/camping trip.

::the hat which held our 2012 goal fates!::

This past New Years Eve was spent with Hunter's good friend's Ryan and Lindsey. { If you scroll through this post, you can see photos of our wild and crazy night in at Hunter's parents house. }  These two are the most sweet, down to earth, bad ass outdoorsy people I have ever met. Though they live in Utah, we've had the change to hang out with them just a few small handful of times, and I'm so proud to say they have also quickly became fast friends of my own, too!  During our New Years Eve bash, we played a variety of games reflecting on current events in 2011, and also set goals for 2012.  We each were to put a goal that could apply to the whole group in a hat, pull out a piece of paper, and accomplish that said goal in 2012.  Hunter and Lindsey both got ones that Lindsey and Ryan put in which were along the lines of daily meditation and reflection, Ryan picked mine which was take a 3 day vacation, and whose did I get you ask?  Hunter's.  And what was I to do?

Climb a frickin' mountain.

I give Hunter a hard time about it and pretend like it was the last thing in life I would ever want to do, but truthfully I was really excited about accomplishing this goal.  Of all the 5 years I've spent in Colorado, I've done my fair share of biking, skiing, and hiking, but never had I climbed a mountain, which is more well known in the CO as hiking a 14'er.

Mix this goal, with our summer long dream of taking a backpacking trip { It's equal parts depressing and awesome how darn quickly the summer weekends zoomed by and we didn't get to this until September! } and BAM.  You have our Labor Day weekend.

After much searching { and by "much searching" I mean "much of Hunter's time spent searching" }, we { he }decided on Mt. Harvard.  Hunt and I set out for Buena Vista Friday around 5p, and thankfully didn't get stuck in mountain traffic too much.  { Anyone who knows I-70 mountain traffic knows what a debbie downer drag it can be on your ENTIRE weekend. }  We got to Buena Vista after dark, and stopped at a local brewery for pizza and brewhaha's.  Though the beer fell short, the atmosphere and mood of a small mountain town pub was just what we were after to kick off the weekend.  A quick stop to the dollar store to pick up cards { we can't go anywhere without them }, and we were off to settle in at the trail-head for the night.  We picked an incredibly calm and beautiful spot along the river { a must when we are camping it seems! }, and quickly realized how beautiful it was with the full moon and zero breeze that we nixed the tent and set up our sleeping supplies in the bed of Hunter's truck!  After we had our beds ready, we found the packed bag of wine { most genius thing ever for backpacking.  Buy a box of wine, remove the bag, pack the bag, drink the bag, win at life. } and scampered through the river and used a  fallen tree as our date night hot spot.  Sipping wine, laughing, chatting and even sitting in silence enjoying the scenery was pretty top notch for a Friday night.  We made our way back to the truck to play cards in the moonlight which was also, you guessed it, a perfecto mundo Friday night date night activity.

Gosh, I have more to say about this weekend than I had expected, so I'll break this into two posts so you all don't go falling asleep on me.

WAKE UP AND CLOSE THE WINDOW.
jk