Zack and I got involved in this hike earlier in the week when Zack got a call from his friend Augustus asking us if he wanted to go on a hike with him. Augustus needed to complete one more ten mile hike to get his hiking merit badge for boy scouts. Given the discussions that Zack and Augustus have had in the past about hiking, Augustus knew we were pretty serious hikers. Given that no one else from Augustus' boy scout troop was trying to finish this merit badge before the end of the year - Augustus called us.
So four of us (me, Zack, Augustus and Augustus' mom) set out around 8:45AM Saturday morning to do this hike. Since I was driving Zack and I stopped at Burger King to get our normal pre-hike breakfast. After that it was the short drive over to Deer Creek Canyon to get our hike underway. We arrived at the trail head at 9:15AM and were one of the few cars in the parking lot. As soon as we arrived we saw our first animals as there were 2 very large mule deer hanging around near the parking lot. The really took no notice of us and just kept grazing away.
The hike itself was very uneventful. The only really surprising thing was when Lex scared up a turkey about 20 feet away from us. The ruccous that turkey made as it flew into the trees scared the crap out of everyone.
We did a combination of the Meadow Lark, Plymouth Creek, Golden Eagle and Red Mesa's trails to get our total distance to 10 miles. It was hard work but in some ways it was surprisingly easy. The last time I did a hike this long was back in 2005 when I hiked to the top of Red Buffalo Pass from Mesa Cortina and back in on day - that was something like 12 miles and seemed much harder than this.
For most of the hike we were in two different groups - Augustus and me in the front and then Zack and Augustus' mom at the back. Lex made every effort possible to spend as much time going back and forth between the two groups and ended up probably going at least 20 miles distance on this hike.
All-in-all it was a good hike. It great to be able to know that Zack can hike 10 miles without any problems.
After the hike Zack and I hurried home as I wanted to get somethings done and we had tickets to the Nuggets game. When we got home I managed to watch a little of the CU/Nebraska game and see CU get beat yet again. But we were only home for about 2 hours before we had to leave for the Nuggets games.
The Nuggets were playing the Chicago Bulls and the game was pretty good. It came down to a last minute buzzer beater shot from Carmelo Anthony. Z and I did not see it as we did our normal routine and left at the end of the 3rd Quarter.
Today has been all about working here around the house. I have done a ton of laundry and cleaned up the kitchen, family room and dining room. We even got back to one of the projects we didn't finish in Zack's room - we cleaned underneath this bed! It is really funny to see the impact of all my work on the house as now clean up efforts don't take long at all as there isn't that much stuff around to clean up!
Despite it all I definitely continue to feel extremely depressed and anxious. I thought with all the activity of the last several days I would finally start losing this sense of depression. But I am not. It sticks to my heart like flies to fly paper. The bottom line is that my heart belongs to Shelly and always will. Without her in my life it is very hard to move forward, backward, sideways, any way... I love this woman and I don't see this love dying or going away. I feel that it is a bleak future that I face.
Below are the pictures taken on the hike yesterday.
Thanks and peace to all! ~J.
FYSRD
FYSRD
FYSRD!
No comments:
Post a Comment