"Today's the day I'm going camping!"

I've been going through my photos getting ready to archive good old 2011, and realized I didn't share the incredible hike we went on this August to the Deception Lakes and along the Pacific Crest Trail. So here's a long overdue Weekend Lovelies: Hiking Edition.

First, to get in the camping mood, hit play on one of my all time favorite Muppet moments below. It's from their Rocky Mountain Holiday with John Denver, and it's the best camping song ever. (I had this on Beta when I was little and played the shit out of it.)



It was a four-day adventure, the kind where you carry everything on your back and kiss the car goodbye on day one. I think we covered about 24 miles total over the four days, and what felt like about a zillion feet in elevation. It was extremely exhausting (damn you, switchbacks!), but it was SO awesome to cover that much terrain on foot, and to see things I'd NEVER see in person otherwise.

To get an idea of how much terrain we covered, here are three different views of the same camp site as we made our way along the trails:

I'm telling you, the pictures don't do the distance justice.

There was so much to see, and it was hard to capture it all. Little critters, flowers, all the trees. I did a terrible job photographing the all creeks we had to cross (we even had to ford one big one, just like in Oregon Trail but with less disentary!). Anyway, here are a few of the better shots managed to grab. Enjoy!

Views from our first campsite:

Remember that rock. You'll see it again near the end.

At the start of our hike on day two, H1 found a friend! It pooped on him.

I kept taking pictures of the forest in an effort to capture how tiny we were among these HUGE trees. I don't think it translates, but believe me, we were ants.

I'm sure it has a different name, but to me it will forever be Tiger Lily Cub.

Seriously, just miles and miles of this. Unbelievable.

This is what the top of a mountain looks like when you're walking on it.

Arriving at our second night campsite:

Above is the view from our tent at our second campsite.

H2 found her own friend! There was no pooping.

By the third day of hiking, we were getting high enough in elevation to see some snow drifts.

This was one of my favorite spots we passed, because it reminded me so much of that old John Denver and The Muppets special.

We had two dogs along with us on our hike, they were great pace keepers and would run up and down the line and make sure we were all accounted for.

That is the rock you could see from our first campsite. I KNOW!!

The hike on day three was so hard. After nine-ish miles, mostly uphill, we got to where we were originally supposed to stay and it was overrun with man eating mosquitos. They went straight through all our Deet and were relentless. We couldn't even stand there long enough to discuss weather we should move on or not, we had to just keep moving.

That's when I stopped taking pictures. I took no pictures of our third night camp, or our hike out. At that point just holding my camera was taking too much energy.

After we hiked out and were headed home, we stopped and got the best burger I've had in 10 years, compliments of The Cruise In in Roslyn, WA. For your Sacramento kids, this burger rivals that of our beloved Tiny's. It was the perfect reward for all our efforts. (Photo borrowed from J's sister's Facebook page. I was too tired to dig my camera out of my bag. Thanks I!)

The whole adventure was all at once exhausting, exhilarating, fun, challenging, GORGEOUS. Most of all, it was totally WORTH IT.