Our backyard

Bryan and Dave have spent many summer days exploring the rugged trails in the mountains behind our houses.  This weekend, they loaded everything into their four wheel drive vehicles and four wheeler and brought all their friends up to their favorite camping spot.  It was gorgeous but freezing.  We hadn't expected the temperature to drop to 40 in the valley.  We huddled around the campfire rotating when our backs got too cold. When we finally went to bed, we made hotties (boiled water and put it in our Nalgenes) to sleep with and hunkered down for the night.  I was mostly warm enough, but uncomfortable and just not sleeping at all.  At 4:30, I heard someone get up and start building a fire.  At 5:00 (when the fire was roaring and I decided I would probably be more comfortable beside it) I got up and joined him.  Bryan and I had a good little whispered heart to heart as we watched for any signs that the sky was lightening.  Finally, dawn came and we sipped our hot chocolate as we watched the sun come over the mountains.  Amazing.

At sunrise, Amy and I wandered into a grove of aspens to take some photos.  I didn't really get any I liked except maybe Amy's little seduction pose. We had fun anyway.

We tried to do some trundling, but most of the big rocks we found were too flat to roll, so we played caveman skeet shooting.  Someone would toss a rock in the air and everyone would try to hit it with smaller rocks.

While we were there just hanging out and talking, I had my hands in my jeans pockets fiddling with some lint or grass or something and rolling it around in my fingers.  When I pulled it out to throw it away, I discovered it was a spider!  I dropped it and did the heebie jeebie dance and then checked out my pocket to find spider guts smeared all over the inside.  Gross!  Now I can saw I squished a spider in my bare fingers.  That will make me sound tough... until I break into the heebie jeebie dance all over again just thinking about it.