Adventure Mishaps

Well. I am finally in Michigan.

Over the last couple weeks I have been traveling, camping, hiking, exploring some of the greatest national parks in the country. My great friend, Rachel Tinknell came out to Colorado and we set out on an epic adventure to Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Lake Powell, Arches, and rounded it out with some white water rafting down the Colorado. It was an amazing trip, and when I'm functioning on more than 3 hours of sleep (after the quick 22 hour drive across the country), I will go into greater detail about the amazing sights!

For now... a couple highlights:
After a long day of driving Rachel and I finally arrived in some national forest just north of Durango... I threw the tent up in the dark, which wasn't a big deal but it was getting cold. We were completely exhausted and simply wanted to sleep. Raye as all ready to get inside the tent when she turned to me and asked where the sleeping bags were. I was a little perplexed because why should i have any idea where she put her sleeping bag in the car? She grabbed by little Sierra Designs and asked if this was one of them... still confused I said yeah that's mine... I began to put things together. She informed me that I was supposed to pack a sleeping bag for her. Of course I offered this to her on the phone in conversation and inconveniently forget this little detail after the fact. Good one Cath. So I gave her my sleeping bag, because it was my bad. I totally offered to grab her one from my roommates... whoops. Well, like I mentioned, it was getting pretty chilly, but I'm thinking i'm tough, so I throw a nice fleece on and grab my down jacket just in case it gets any colder. Of course it's going to get colder. I curl into a ball and try to force my legs into a sleeve of the jacket. I pull the body of the jacket as high as possible and kind of tuck the 2nd arm around and under my butt. There was constant repositioning all night. Something was consistently cold on my body... why didn't I just grab more clothes from the car?

I locked the keys inside.

Yep. Good move number 2. I realized shortly after I went to bed that I had locked the keys in the car. When I told Rachel I did something quite stupid, she immediately knew. She was able to ignore it and realize that there wasn't anything to be done at that moment, and we'd address the situation tomorrow morning. Me being the ridiculous human I am began to hike out of the forest convinced I'd get cell coverage eventually (terrible idea), attempted to pry the doors open in the middle of the night (maybe if I just pull hard enough... ha), and contemplated throwing a rock through the window (not exactly a good solution). Eventually the morning arrived and my AAA hero Raymond rescued us around 9am. We loved Raymond. Loved. He brightened our day more than we could have even imagined. And we even got a toot toot from him on his way out.

More stories and pictures to come :)

Stay Tuned..