Mountain Climbed, Ticket Booked, Bags Packed....

Last weekend I went to Colorado for a girls weekend with two friends from Albion, Meredith and Janna. It was such a breath of fresh air (quite literally) to be back with friends from college. Janna summed it up well when she pondered about how we all have ended up in such different circumstances -- we are in different places in the country (we've all been different places in the world at some point), doing varied jobs, and we all married men who are doing different things from each other too, but there are a few core things that will always tie us together: friendship, love of nature, being physically active, and of course the love of food. This year's adventure consisted of camping out in Leadville and climbing Mt. Elbert, the highest peak in The Rocky Mountain Range: 14,433 feet. Meredith was kind to us un-acclimated ones, and let us take a nice pace...it took us about 5 hours up, and 3 hours down.

Here's Janna and Meredith at our FREE campsite near the trail head! :)


Chopping wood for our fire...


Trying to get that fire going...


Cooking dinner...


The start of our hike at 5am with our head lights...


Just before tree line (12,000ft)...


Lots of beautiful wildflowers along the way...


Views of the trail...




The Summit!


The trip down...



After our 3 hour hike down, we stopped for ice cream, and then drove back to Winter Park for a feast! Thanks girls for such a great weekend!

Ryan and I just booked our tickets to Uganda! Our friend Liz's baby is being baptized in January, and we've been invited to be Godparents! I met Liz in Boston when she moved there from Uganda 4 years ago and became my roommate! It has been a huge dream of ours to go to Africa, and to be able to go and be part of a ceremony like this and stay with her family makes it all the more special! We'll be going for 2 weeks this winter, with a 2 day layover in London.

Here is a picture of Liz and Charlene, our God-child-to-be! (The photo is from their visit to Tucson last summer.)


And, for those who are wondering where exactly Uganda is...


As for the bags being packed, that's a little outdated now...I started this post about a week ago. We packed our bags for Michigan to attend our family's annual Brown's Clearing Survivor Games...pictures to come soon!