NOSTALGIA - UINTAH HIKE JULY 2004

Kellen and I have some undeveloped film lying around and we think some of it might be from our honeymoon to New Orleans (before hurricane Katrina). Kellen came across some the other day and decided to get it developed. Well, most of the film worked, and it was a bunch of pictures from the backpacking trip we took together the week before we got married. My dad, two sisters and three younger brothers decided they wanted to do a 50 mile backpacking trip up in the Uintah mountains the summer of 2004. So they invited Kellen and I to go with them. My dad always said you should see what your future spouse looks like when they are not all made up before you marry them anyway :) So we all went. It was awesome. I remember getting up there early in the morning and eating a nice breakfast of eggs and bacon before hitting the trail. Our last good meal for quite awhile...

That trip also helped reinforce how awesome Kellen was as a person. My brothers were still kind of young on that trip and would have a hard time sometimes carrying their backpacks. So Kellen and my dad would take turns carrying the boys' backpacks off and on (in addition to their own heavy backpacks) without complaining. And even part way through, my knee started acting up (I had hurt it pretty bad once on a backpacking trip and couldn't walk on it for a whole day) and Kellen, my dad, and even my older sister snuck stuff out of my pack when I wasn't looking to make my pack a bit lighter(I didn't find that out until after the hike). There was also one night when it was really windy and cold. The over-flap (fly) of our tent kept blowing off part of the tent and Kellen kept fixing it for us (although he said he was praying it wouldn't fly off completely because he didn't really want to chase it down).

And then we saw a giant moose.


But then near the end of the hike, we had a scary turn of events. We had two nights left. That first night it rained a ton on us, and all our tents and sleeping bags had gotten soaked. We stood around the campfire the next morning to dry them out. I wasn't looking forward to sleeping in damp sleeping bags. My youngest sister and one brother were getting more accustomed to hiking but were still kind of slower than the rest of us, so we had sent them ahead with specific directions. Then we got to a fork in the road and realized they had most likely taken the wrong path. But not knowing for sure if they had or not, we decided to just high-tail it the rest of the way (over 10 miles) to see if we could catch up to them. However, we still had two young boys with us. So my dad and Kellen each took a backpack of the younger boys on top of their own and started hiking as fast as they could the rest of the trail. My older sister and I stayed back and hiked at a slower pace with my two younger brothers. My dad had also taken the map and water filter pump and they would occasionally leave bottles of clean water on the side of the trail with arrows in the dirt of which way to go. The plan was that they would get back to the truck as quickly as possible and if they hadn't run into my sister and brother, they would drive over to the end of the other trail and hopefully find them at the end (the other trail was quite a bit shorter). So sure enough, when the rest of us had finally made it to the end of our trail, the truck was gone. So we set up a little rest area on the beach there near the lake, laid out our wet stuff, and waited for them to come back. They eventually did come back, and luckily, with my little brother and sister. We were all so happy that they were okay, and actually kind of relieved that we didn't have to spend another night in wet bedding. I also remember there were some animal cookies in the truck and how good they tasted! And we stopped by an Arby's and got ourselves some meat sandwiches, and they were really good too. Days of mostly eating poptarts and cup of soup noodles can make you appreciate the simplest foods. Some pictures (can you tell who had the camera most of the time?):




And side note: Kellen also said he remembered how he went to the outhouse after getting back to where the truck was and noticing how it didn't smell so bad anymore... Gotta love camping!

On another note, on that same role of film there were pictures of when Kellen had taken his sister and her husband down the Subway hike in Zion National Park. It is a gorgeous hike down into a canyon that you get to repel and swim through ice cold water :) That is where Kellen asked me to marry him (the exact spot is the picture where Kellen is kneeling). The pictures don't really give the colors and beauty of the place justice (very old camera), but I posted them anyway.

In the last picture, both guys are standing on the ground :)


The proposal spot: