What are Men to Rocks & Mountains?

Ha! Guess where the line is from! Yes. Pride & Prejudice (fondly also known as P&P). That describes my weekend perfectly: to the activity Friday night and the two different versions of the movie that I have watched this weekend.

Jen and I went on a maiden and mini backpacking trip Friday night. We hiked up to Rock Creek Campground--a 3-mile hike from Rock Canyon Park trail head. It was so beautiful. And fairly difficult! I got into a pretty good groove after about 1 and a half miles--I had an energy boost or something because I didn't have to rest as much. We took along my little trail book--but it was awful! It talked about taking the left fork for the last half mile but there were so many forks! And none of the left ones looked promising. But we ended up getting to the right place when we saw a primo camp-spot . . . sadly taken by some other people. (Next time we will have to leave earlier to get it.)

We arrived at a fairly decent spot around 9:30 at night, set up my tent and immediately got my new Jetboil backpacking stove boiling some water for a backpacking meal--Beef Stroganoff. Pretty good--it wasn't too nasty, except for the last bite in my bowl that was pure salt and pepper. Yuck! Ewww. Word of wisdom: don't drink your meal down to the last bite unless you have been diligent about stirring it while you eat it. Anyway. We got tired pretty quickly so we went to bed right after dinner. A bit later, it started to rain on us a little bit, so we scrambled outside to get the rain-fly on my tent and then throw our packs in the tent with us. It didn't rain again. Good gravy. But . . .

About an hour and a half later I woke up to the sound footsteps and the light of a flashlight on our tent. It kind of freaked me out, but I was still half asleep and half awake so I couldn't be sure that I wasn't dreaming it so I just shrugged it off. And nothing more happened. I told Jen about it when we woke up in the morning and we were glad that it had rained some to cause us to bring in our stuff so this random guy couldn't swipe it and also with the rain-fly on my tent he wasn't able to see inside the tent so we were glad for that too. We ate our breakfast of oatmeal (yes, I got to use my Jetboil again!) and packed up. Just as we were about to throw our packs on and head out, this random guy appeared on the trail and just stood there and stared at us!! But to no fear on our part . . . because it was our friend, Sid! I immediately asked him if he was the one that walked around our tent that night and shined his flashlight on our tent. And it was him! When he heard that Jen and I were going to go backpacking (just the two of us) he and a roommate (who bailed) decided they were going to hike up in the middle of the night and freak us out!! Sid said he wanted to shake our tent and really scare us, but he chickened out when he couldn't be sure that it was us in the tent! What a crack up!

So we hiked out and then went to breakfast at the Village Inn! It was a fabulous maiden trip: backpack was awesome, Jetboil was awesome! New Thermarest that I got for Christmas was marvelous, but the slope we slept on was not. That was one more added bonus to bringing the packs in the tent--we were able to prop up our feet some so we didn't slide too much. (Yeah, yeah, yeah. We probably could have found a better camp-spot, but we were tired and didn't care too much to hike further in the dark.)

We've got another backpacking trip planned soon! Yay!! I will SO be ready for Havasupai!!