ribald nakedness (or: backpacking)

Half of you read the title of this post and thought, "now this should be good - I wonder what sort of ribald nakedness he's gotten into this time?" The other half of you, lead by GMack and his consortium of seer-sucking blouses, are still thinking, "what the hell does ribald mean?" (well, here you go.) Rest assured that there will be no nakedness, ribald or otherwise, on this post, although it got close this weekend.

I left Friday to go camping with my brother Philip, also known as "Angst" on his blog, his best friend Eli, and Mark, who will be the pastor of our soon-to-be Denver Church. Since none of us thought to bring a digital camera, or rather since all of us thought about it but no one did, and the disposable camera's pictures aren't developed yet, we'll do this Portland style and use similar pictures from other people's vacations.

Not us backpacking. How'd that guy get screwed with a pink pack?

Mark sold us on this trip as "back country camping", which turned out to mean hiking a mile and a half into the mountains and setting up camp for two days. I was prepared for a 5-10 mile per day hike, and initially felt a little disappointed that we'd be hiking so little, but after carrying my pack through the heat and steep terrain for about an hour I was quite content to call it quits and set up camp.

Not our camp.

We ate peanut butter and jelly tortillas for lunch and set off from our camp sans (gmack: without) packs for a two mile hike to cub lake, which was lovely.

cub lake and stone's peak

We ate freeze dried beef strogonaf for dinner cooked on a camp stove, and I poured 120 degree not-boiling water on Mark's leg, and then we made waaay too much raman which had to be eaten as discarded food attracts bears. We smoked some stogies around the pile of rocks that served as the center of our campsite, since fires are strictly forbidden in the back country,
and went to a fitfull and uncomfortable sleep in our tents.

On Saturday we breakfasted on oatmeal and set off for a hike to Bierstadt lake, which was pretty but crowded with cheating tourists who drove to the drop off station about 15 minutes from the lake. We spent the day walking around the woods, eating lunch, and not having much to do.

Bierstadt lake, minus tourists

After an early dinner we decided to climb some rocks and check out the view. The rocks lead to a small cliff, which gave an amazing view of the valley below us and mountainside across. Phil and I had both been hiking in sweatpants, which we discarded. I was still wearing my shorts underneath - Phil was not, and hence the ribald (almost) nakedness. I made a trip back to camp for cigars and water, and we watched the sunset from the cliff.

this is a lot like the view from our cliff

sunset over Long's peak.
We were facing Long's peak from
our cliff, but our sunset was sadly
not this colorful.

Later on in the evening, as Eli and I were hanging the food in a tree, a young buck with fuzzy horns wandered into the camping area. Surprisingly un-afraid, he walked within about 10 feet of us while grazing in the grass. Mark went for a walk in the last of the day light and said he stood about 50 yards from some Elk.

somebody else took this picture of a bull elk
taking a drink in the sunset.

Sunday we packed up and went home. We stopped in Estes park for a manly breakfast before heading back to our respective homes. All in all it was an excellent and short weekend trip filled with relaxation, and I'd highly recommend it.

I spent Sunday afternoon cleaning my pack, doing a small loud of laundry, playing Oblivion until my wife got home, and marveling over how clean she'd made the house. This morning I'm back at work, where our AC is working again, so no wind-tunnel fan experience for me this morning. Hooray!