Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Hot Springs on the 4th!

Chase and I ventured up to Idaho for the 4th again this year. It's becoming a tradition to head that direction and escape the crowds at the parades. This year we hiked into Skillern Hot Springs with my mom and dad. Skillern is located in the Sawtooth National Forest, Smokey Mtn. Area. It was a ton of fun! I finally got to prove to Chase that I'm no sissy when it comes to the outdoors!

Friday morning we got everything together and loaded our packs and headed out. We hit the trailhead at about 2:00 p.m. IN THE HEAT OF THE DAY!!! The hike in took us 2 hours, which isn't bad when your packin all that extra weight! It was a couple miles in (my dad says 5-6, but it didn't seem that long). We set up camp, enjoyed a soak in the pools and came back to start dinner. It had been thundering a little, but we thought nothing of it. Until it started to pour down hail the size of marbles! We thought "oh... it should pass quick" NOT!! After huddling under some pine trees for about 15 minutes trying to stay dry and eat our spaghetti, we decided it wasn't letting up so we made a break for our tents. One hour and 30 minutes later it quit raining! That is a long time to spend in a tiny tent when your not sleeping! We had to stand around what was left of our fire and try to dry things out. It was quite the experience, but I have to say it could have been a whole lot worse!

We hiked out Saturday and made it to the truck in 1.5 hours. When we got home we weighed our packs to see how tough we really were. The results go like this - - Dad = somewhere around 30-32 lbs. Chase = 26 lbs, plus an extra 4 lbs from the gun he was packin. Mom = 18 lbs. And mine was only 15 lbs. (I swear it was more on the way in!!)


So much fun we had! Thanks for the good times Mom & Dad!

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