More to do's: Sofa

The Look:

$25 Craigslist find:

I wanted a more geometric shape, so I was excited to find this for such a good deal...

and it'll be ugly fun in the mean time. 

I'm a little worried about the challenge of finding a clean enough herringbone print to really bring in a geometric print. 

The honey-do List: for me!

Russ and I are so, so very excited to move into our new place in Rexburg and to finish up at school! 

I've been bargain shopping for furniture for our new place (first place we'll be in where we aren't borrowing furniture or it doesn't come pre-furnished.)

SO! I've taken it upon myself to thrift the snot out of the state of Idaho to get exactly what I want at a reasonable, or phenomenal price. I'll post a list of my finds and projects to come. 

The look I want:

What I found:

$25 and an hour an Craigslist found us these three diamonds in the rough:

The're a bit dirty, but are sturdy and the perfect shape, I'm super excited about this find!

This is 25: Letting go of expectations.

This morning I found myself standing alone, dressed in a hospital gown in a dimly lit room and couldn't help but think

...

This isn't mine.

....

I knew if I breathed in too deeply, I might cry. 

Not because I was nervous.

Not because Russell couldn't come in with me.

Not because I was afraid of what I might find out.

But, because it wasn't mine.

...

Not my life.

Not my plan.

Not my 26th year.

Not mine.

...

I slipped on my shoes and looked down at my feet, past the gown and down to the fiesta colored slippers Russ bought me for our anniversary....

Mine.

...

I've spent so much time running away from accepting the fact that I have over 4 years of heartache trying to get pregnant as part of my life. It is mine. Better or worse, it is part of who I am and who I will become. It is something that defines a part of me... and is a near constant struggle to not let consume me.

Most days I know that I am more than this, but some days I can't help but question if I am less. Some days, even just some hours, it feels too close...too thorough and too concrete to ever change, and I feel so completely overwhelmed that it is mine.

Even though its not the small house with a big yard with the children so seemingly perfect, that I could just kiss their tiny fingers and toes. 

...

Even though it isn't those things...it is a husband who splits an ice cream with me after I cry about it sometimes feeling like it'll never change and the way it is, is just too much. It is the way he kisses me softly and, if even for that brief turning moment between crumbling down and realizing I can stand back up, it is knowing completely and fully that everything is going to be okay.

It, this life, this experience, this heartache, this love... is mine. 

This is my 25, its not at all what I had expected, not exactly what I had thought I wanted.

It is hard.

It is beautiful.

It is mine.

Thank you for your time...

I work in a call center where I talk to dozens of people every day from around the world. 

Some are quick and to the point, while others will relate unsolicited life events like going to Knotsberry Farms...on horseback, riding behind their mother, back in the day when the only rides were tied up to hitching posts upon arrival. 

---

I spoke with a man who was helping his son, who was in a high security prison, order a pair of warm shoes; because his son's cell was so cold. I could hear in the way he worded each sentence and chose each word about his son, that he loved him, not excusing, but; despite anything he had done. 

The pair of shoes he was purchasing were the same pair I had had my eye on for my own father, whom I share an ongoing game with of finding the best slippers for his Christmas present every year. 

As I spoke of what I knew of these shoes with this man, whom I have never met and more than likely never will; I was continually touched by the sincerity he had towards his son and the outright responsibility he held for himself to keep his son's feet warm, if nothing else.

At the end of our conversation, I assured him of a confirmation email being sent and ran through the same scripts I run through dozens of times every day. 

"And, is there anything else I can help you with?" I closed. 

What he said next, took me by surprise.

"Thank you. Thank you for your help. Thank you for your kindness and thank you so much for your time."

He went on:

"I know I don't know you, but you seem decent and you seem kind. And I really need you to know how much I appreciate that."

---

Ever since this brief conversation, I can't help but roll the words around in my head.

"Thank you for your help"

"Thank you for your kindness."

"Thank you for your time"

---

What an amazing opportunity we have to share something so quantifiable; the best of us having 100 years, yet; so infinite.

I can't help but think about my family and friends and the moments they choose to spend with me. Serving me, laughing with me, sharing hopes and dreams-- pieces of themselves -- with me.

Dear, dear loved ones:

Thank you for your time.

26 goals...

26 goals for the 26th year of my life:

So, every year I set a list of goals I would like to accomplish. A goal for every year of my life, and one for the year I'm working on.

Here goes:

1. Grow our family. Yea, I said that out loud. 

(Please note: this is still a goal, and not an actuality yet!)

2. Graduate from college...finally.

3. Train Hueco through the first levels of puppy school.

4. Learn how to reupholster.

5. Go sledding.

6. Take family pictures.

7. Have a fully decorated home.

8. Find a job pertaining to what I went to school for.

9. Sell 10 things I make (whoa! Dream big!)

10. Perform something on stage.

11. Buy a camera.

12. Climb a 5.10 without hanging.

13. Do a solid yoga headstand. 

14. Run a 5k and get a shirt!

15. Make home made yogurt

16. Eat less processed food, more home cookin!

17. Not eat at a fast food joint more than 10 times

(embarrassing that that has to be a goal for me!)

18. have 100% visiting teaching!

19. Make a piece of art for my home.

20. Take Russell on a super epic date.

21. Eat at the Space Needle.

22. Swim in the ocean.

23. Sleep under the stars.

24. Week long backpacking trip.

25. Call my brothers and sisters more.

and!

26. Study the Book of Mormon cover to cover.

---

Its going to be a great year!!

Friday...

Dear Friday 9-5, 

                  If your mornings didn't guarantee me pumpkin-cinnamon steamers, we may not be friends.

Sincerely, 

Cambra

Happy Weekending!

What a day...

We played hooky from work 

(okay, so we both requested the day off weeks in advance)

Russ surprised me with some awesome shoes I've been eyeing

Got my ring cleaned

Ate lunch at Dick's

Went back to our spot at Manito park

Wandered around Petco oogling puppy toys for our little guy

I scheduled Russ for a massage

 (because everyone should get a full body massage at least once in their lifetime) 

Stopped in for some Mongolian food

and

Ate a year old cupcake.

It was the best anniversary, ever!

Every girl deserves to be loved the way I am. 

I love, love, love my man.

small things...

There is something wonderfully, rebelliously, optimistic about brightly colored umbrellas.

A successful Saturday

Today, I found a yoga studio! I'm ecstatic and anxious to start practicing again... 

Russ and I took a quick jaunt over to Minnihaha to climb.

Then we picnicked in the park and set up our slack line.

As we were goofing around, we noticed that behind a large tree a ways off, four little kids were tentatively inching their way closer towards us. 

We threw them a wave and before we knew it we were slack lining with a motley little crew of 4-8 year olds.

A good Saturday indeed. 

Another Skein Bites the Dust

Two down, two to go on my shrug.

Mayhaps I haven't actually picked it up and done anything on it for the last week or so...

but mayhaps not.

With Our Passions Combined!

We made our own rope tarp! 

Russ is an avid climber, and I love to sew.

So!

We took Russ' leaving his rope tarp in another state as an opportunity to make a brand new, light weight one.

Hello 3 oz(ish) Rope tarp.

And Russell did all the sewing, I'm so proud!

I haven't kicked the bucket...

I've just been crocheting. 

Okay, really I've been doing a whole lot of nothing. 

But since my leave from productivity ends Monday (the end is in sight!!)

I've decided to keep my fingers busy until them with my FIRST EVER crochet project aside from accessories.

A super simple shrug.

I'm doing it in Lion Brand Homespun 412 Pearls. 

It's an off white/faint tan and wonderfully nubby and soft.

In other words, it snags on my crochet hook every chance it gets. 

No matter, the bigger the piece gets, the more scrumptiously soft it feels.

....and honestly...

the closer I feel to my Aussie-home made-knitting-baking idol Jorth

Someday I'll be as amazing as she is at all of this yarn work!

hopefully :)

Enjoying the moment.

I'm impatient.

It is a fact I have lived with my entire life. I have never been so self-fooled as to claim any sort of sufferance.

---

I am always getting frustrated and caught up in what I don't have now:

my degree, a baby, a little house of my own, financial stability, heck; a job right now.

 as opposed to appreciating that which I do have:

The most attentive husband I could ever ask for, a loving family, a warm place to live, food to eat.

---

As I was nearing the halfway mark of my run tonight, Claire de Lune began playing on my ipod and an especially cool breeze greeted me from across a grassy field.

It was perfect.

---

In that moment, my breathing came easy and my uphill pace felt like a soaring accomplishment. I was exactly where I wanted to be and it was amazing.

Here's to holding on to the fleeting moments of peace and perfection to help us through the rest.

Road Trip Day 6 and 7: Yosemite

After going to the beach, we drove down through the Redwoods.

Literally, through the Redwoods.

And ended up in Russell's Disneyland otherwise known as the Yosemite Valley

We spent the afternoon hiking around and oogling the granite giants.

We then went for a swim. Since we had been road tripping, our car was a bit of a mess and we had a ton of food in there. I was worried about the bears until I saw how many people were around and figured there was no way a bear would come by all of the people. 

As we paddled around the river with about 150 others, a bear ambled its way right on past a group of Asian tourists (who later scampered through the woods in their bikinis, chasing the animal down trying to get a picture with it...seriously...its a bear, run! and not towards it!).

After that I was pretty paranoid about coming back to broken windows, so we headed back to our car and started trying to find a place to camp.

We scoped out camp 4, but it was full of families with hardly a climber in site (which really is the only romance of the pit hole known as camp 4), so we headed up the valley to a campground Russ and his buddy Dallas camped at when they were there. 

We lost the sun as we ascended out of the valley and arrived at the campground in pitch darkness. Finding flocks of children darting across the roadway in the darkness, led us to parking our car and meandering through the campground trying to find a spot to sleep. We found one open site and figured it was because a large Mexican family (30+ people) had gathered their cars nearby and were blaring Mariachi music to the stars and their local sleeping campers.

I hopped onto the table to wait for Russ to pull the car around when one of the Mother's from the large group walked up to me with a swarm of little kids running around her and informed me they were renting the space for the use of the bear box, she then opened it to show that it was packed to the brim with alcohol "food".

So, we headed out.

We ran into another family who was in our same predicament and they informed us they had just pulled their cars into the trees and were setting up their tents there in a non-site.

Looking at their chocolate smeared children holding giant marshmallows in each hand, I asked the dad (who was holding and eating a whole wheel of cheese, awesome) if there was a random bear box there. He said no, but it was OK they just put all of their food in their car. He then told us we could set up camp next to them. Looking again at his group of little bear snacks kids, we politely declined, drove away. Pulled over to the side of a road and slept in our car hoping the bears wouldn't break in and get our crackers...or rip through the chocolate covered children's tents.

---

We successfully made it through the night and climbed at Swan Slab (after meandering around trying to find a short cut to the Grack for a good hour), I got attacked by a giant bug; from which a kind old gentlemen saved me life by swatting it off my rope and stomping it into the ground. Russ got a little souvenir caribiner and promises to come back in peak climbing season when there were actually climbers in camp four. 

We then made our way out to stay with some family friends for the night and hit up SIX FLAGS the next day.

Road Trip Day 5: our fiasco in the woods

Instead of spending the night at Smith Rock after a long day of climbing, we decided to pop on over to the Oregon coast, since Russ had never been there.

We found a free campground in Coos Bay on our GPS and decided to make the four hour drive and set up camp around 11 or 12 that night.

---

I'm a little infamous for falling asleep on road trips when I'm supposed to be navigating (just ask Russ about our first trip to Leavenworth when we were 17...he'll gladly tell ya all about it) so, to prevent myself from falling asleep, I bought a Dr. Pepper.

This just happened to be the night that I found out that after I drink caffeine to keep myself awake, and after it fails and sleep starts to win the battle...I start getting really, really paranoid. 

Good thing I never did drugs. I'd be carazay. 

Anywho...

We find the dirt road turn off for the campground around 11:30 and head on into the woods. The road is extremely narrow, the sky has clouded over with fog from the bay nearby and the moss covered trees are starting to make me feel more than a tad claustrophobic, when the thought hits me.

...

What if big foot, friggin BIG.FOOT. comes and gets us?

I'm freakin out kids.

Full on, approaching panic attack, freaking out.

---

We'd been driving down the dirt road further and further into these spooky woods when we realize, we've already driven 40 miles, we have to turn around or the campground has to show up soon. We come to a fork in the road with one fork blocked off by a fence, so we take the road to the left only to find the road to have been plowed into a big open space with all the shoveled around dirt piled in front of the continuing road.

At this point, we admit defeat and begin backtracking to a spot where our GPS would work again. Russell keeps insisting that I can fall asleep,that he is fine, but I insist on staying awake blabbering like a skitzo fool.

When, all of a sudden, I feel something huge crawling up my leg.

"Okay" I tell myself. "You've been being paranoid, it's probably just a string or something".

So, I bravely and calmly move my hand towards the thing crawling on me, pretty convinced at this point that there is just some inanimate object on my leg.

Nope.

"Russell..."

"yea?"

"There's a bug"

"Did you get it?"

"No, Russell...there's a bug"

"...ok?"

Fully registering that there is a half-dollar sized creature scurrying its way up my flesh, I scream

"NO! RUSSELL, ITS A BUG! A STOP THE CAR BUG!"

and I smacked that bug right off of my leg. Russ slams on the breaks, turns on the cab light and hops out of the car while I scamper into the driver's seat just as the gargantuan beast attempts to crawl up and under the glove box compartment. 

Luckily for me, and unluckily for the giant stink-bug-beetle-satan-spawn, Russ is quick and pulled out his pocket knife, flipped out the pliers, grabbed its leg and flung it off into the woods to be eaten by Sasquatch.

When we finally got out of the woods and back onto a paved road, we headed straight to our newly-favorited-trusty camping spot...another Wal-Mart parking lot.

Luckily, the beach was gorgeous the next day and there were no more bugs in the car:

On to the Redwoods and the most Redneck experience of our trip...

Road Trip Day 4: Smith Rock

We arrived at Smith Rock in the middle of the night, only being able to guess at where the cliffs were. We couldn't see anything. After scouting around for a campground, we found a place at the Bivouac campground about 8 miles from the park entrance, pitched our tent, hunkered down and got ready for an awesome day of climbing to come.

There were giant, quarter sized, stink bug type beetles all over the campground, but no mosquitoes so it turned out nice.

Smith Rock!

Russ playing around on the base of To Bolt or Not To Be: 5.14a, the first 5.14 climbed in America on record. Note the lack of...anything to haul yourself up with.

We did several climbs on Cinnamon slab and got nice and toasted in the sun, had a quick shady lunch and headed over to the nearby gorge to find a crack to climb. We ran into a large group of French people who were just starting the climb (the only other people in the gorge, climbing the only climb we were interested in, the odds.)

It ended up being a horrible sketchy bust, so after that little fiasco, we washed our hands and feet in the river and decided to head out to the Oregon coast that night instead of the next day.

We made lunch in the car and we located a free campground just outside of Coos bay on our phones, set the GPS and headed out through Mount Hood National Forest and down some really narrow, windy roads that got a little scary after dark.

Seeing as how the day of climbing went mostly without a hitch, we should have known we were in for some sort of epic to make up for it.

oh yea, cliffhanger.

Seattle and Portland and driving and driving.

After waking up refreshed in our muggy little hatch backed Jebby, in a quaint and downright picturesque Wal-Mart parking lot (after getting freaked out by some creepers that night) We set out to explore Seattle.

We hit up a couple of familiar places from our honey moon, had an amazing lunch of mish-mashed Pike's Place goodies including jalapeno ballilos and a pint of raspberries, played Sequence at McDonalds when we got tired of walking and picked Aubrey up from work and headed back to her place where she made an awesome dinner for us.

We hit up cupcake royale and an arcade by the pier then tucked in for the night while watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. (If you haven't heard of it, educate yourself. If you have, we'd probably be friends)

Around ten the next morning, we headed in to Portland to explore the goods of Saturday market and to experience our first sushi/conveyor belt...thing. It was awesome. 

...of to Smith Rock!

An Epic in Index: Part/Pitch Two

After surviving the depths of Mordor (see previous post), Russ was all racked up to start the second pitch. As far as multi-pitches go, this first pitch hadn't been so bad. 

A little mis-communication, minimal blood lost, a quick glimpse into Hade's humble abode. 

Things were going great.

---

Russ begins the overhung section of the climb, which the guidebook labels "an awkward move for the grade" and places several pieces of gear purely for directional purposes (to guide the rope so it doesn't drag over sharp rock...((more on the sharp rock later))...and another). The second pitch takes Russ a little longer, and our communication is still shoddy because of the frequent train passing, but I finally hear him call 'off belay'. I tie in and Russell automatically pulls me tight (once again, I'm a newby wuss, so Russ usually keeps the rope tight when he can't see me while I second a climb). 

Unfortunately, the pieces of gear he left in to guide the rope are now pulling me off the little belay ledge I had perched myself on and are now pulling me towards what would turn out to be a nasty pendulum swing into an impressively menacing out-cropping of jagged rocks. Fun!

As I begin to call for more slack in the rope, a train barrels past, blaring its horn at the several road crossings. Russ can't hear me. I'm shaking from holding on to the rock in attempts to keep myself from swinging into the group of stone tomahawks, and of course this train is especially long and Russell is still (as would be beneficial in most other cases when I have followed on a climb) pulling the rope tight. So, I decide to myself I just have to climb this part faster than he can pull the rope super tight. He can't hear me, and I can't just cling to this rock forever. So, off I go. I remove the gear pulling me to the right and into the rocks, only to find myself in a tensioned position with no further hand holds. 

Still under the overhang and out of Russell's sight and earshot, I do the only thing I can think of doing. I cut the rope. 

What? Just kidding. How dumb do you think I am? C'mon kids, cut me some slack (get it? No? psh)

I cried. 

So there I am, stuck under this overhang, bawling my little eyes out trying to call out to Russ who can only hear me in short bursts, and I know that I have to keep climbing (that sounds so pathetically dramatic, which..in this case.. is pitifully accurate) I finally pull the roof and find myself face to face with a hold-less slab of rock. 

Psyched out, crying and tired I can finally see Russell who is looking at me like I'm some sort of pitiful wet kitten trying to escape a deep tub of shallow water. After shuffling back and forth on an inch wide ledge about three feet long, I finally figure out I can down climb to some holds and traverse over to the start of the crack. 

Once I get to the crack, I remember, I really, really suck at climbing cracks. I mean I'm not awesome at climbing in general (I crush 5.9s outside on a good day...a REALLY good day) but I completely fail at hand cracks. 

Getting a little better grip on myself, I've controlled the sobs to super pathetic wimpers and a touch of psycho babble. 

"you're ok, you're ok, you're ok, you're really high and you're going to die and here comes another train but you're ok."

I jam my fists and feet into the crack and begin climbing, only to slide back down the 5 feet I had come over the course granite slab surrounding the crack. This may have been the most melodramatic time of my entire life, but people, really, like honestly...I thought the end was nigh. So, I lay flat against the cliff and cry some more. Until I can hear Russell quietly repeating, "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry. Please don't cry, you're ok. I'm so sorry. I'm going to try and come down." 

Then I just felt like a jerk. Here I am hanging out with the sweetest guy in the whole world, ruining a perfectly good climbing adventure on the first day of our road trip, 30 feet from the top of a climb, bawling like a baby. 

So I pulled up my big girl pants, tightened my shoes, sniffled my last sniffle and laybacked the crack (where you hold on to one side of the crack, one hand above the other, lay your weight against the pull of your hands and then push with your feet to create enough tension to shuffle your hands and feet up the crack, yes it is as hardcore as it sounds...for once) and got to Russell. 

Where he looked like someone suffering from the remorse of clubbing a baby seal, but also totally impressed with said baby seals...climbing....anyway.

We hung out at the top of the climb for a little while until my snot stopped running and my eyes stopped stinging. 

He gave me a big hug, we descended the climb, drove through some amazing wooded area and ended up sleeping in a Wal-Mart parking lot instead of by the hippies.

...

And this is why my mother worries about me traipsing about in the woods. 

On to Seattle!

An Epic in Index: Part One

About halfway between Leavenworth and Seattle, Washington along US-2 West is a little...

let me try again..

tiny podunk town; where the only building aside from a tour service and city hall is a gas station/Asian barbecue restaurant/post office/grocery store...

and is also home to some gargantuan granite cliffs.

----

So, naturally; we were there to climb.

Now, before I get started reliving this little gem of an adventure; let me just tell you that Russ and I have NEVER had a successful multi-pitch experience. Why? We don't know. We're great partners in all other aspects of our life, but for some reason multi-pitches do us in when we are together. Seperate:fine, dandy. Together: disaster and tears.

So, with that in mind...enjoy my elaboration on, yet another, failed multi-pitch epic.

----

We get in to Index around 3, just as things are starting to think about cooling off, we had our climb all picked out, something easy--with our horrible track record with multi-pitches, we knew we were already pushing our luck,so we kept the grade low. 

We scoured out a place to camp that night, next to a hippy van that looked like it had been established in the 70's and passed down by great-grand-hippy to his love child's, love child.

We got to the cliff base around 4:30 with plenty of light and slightly cooler rock. Perfect timing. A British husband and wife were just starting the first pitch on the climb we were looking at when we arrived, so we chatted with the wife and watched them climb. The wife had a bit of difficulty on the start of the second pitch and again towards the top where a slanted hand crack ascended to the anchors. Her troubles worried me a little bit, but at that point, I was sick of getting eaten by mosquitoes and just wanted out of the brush, so I assured Russ I was good to go, and harnessed up to belay. 

After a tricky, stemmy, slopey start; Russ flew up the first pitch, out of sight over a ledge and called 'off belay' when he went in direct to the anchors. I yelled back ok, and he began pulling the rope. When I had the end in my hand I gave it a tug and told him I had the end, so I began tying in but he kept pulling the rope. Again, I tugged and told him I had the end and to hold on, but he pulled the rope faster. 

Confused and fed up with being eaten alive by carnivorous insects, I let go of the rope and sat down in exasperation. A few minutes later Russ called down in a tentative voice "uh...are you ok?"

"Yea, just fine. Do your thing." 

Mayhaps my retort was a little bit snarky and pouty, but how can I really remember when I was getting destroyed by swarms of blood suckers and deafened by trains that ran past literally every 10 minutes. 

Russ rapped down with a confused look on his face and checked again if I was ok and asked why I didn't second the climb. I informed him of his hasty rope pulling and he informed me that he was unable to hear me because of the trains and their continuing echo above the treeline. 

Really, really, wanting to be a good sport, I insisted we try the route again and go for the top anchors. Unsure of the difficulty at the start of the climb (let's face it, I'm a n00b) Russ insisted I top rope the first pitch just for fun, to both of our surprise, I had no difficulty with the start and flew up the first half of the climb.

Until...

I came to the back door of the deepest depths of Mordor. For reals kids, it was freaky. 

The temperature was somewhere in the mid 80's outside, but from this deep, mossy, crevice came the stench of rotting flesh carried on an icy wind that blasted out of the earth and instantly gave me goose bumps. The air coming out of there couldn't have been any warmer than 50 degrees. It was chilling in the creepiest of ways. 

Freaking myself out with all the ungodly things that could drudge their way up from the dark stench of this abyss I scampered away and up over the ledge to the anchors. 

After rappelling back to Russ off of some giant metal anchors left over from when there had been a surrounding rock quarry, we set up to climb again, this time to the top. Russ flies up the pitch and I quickly follow (holding my breath and staying as far as I could from the toxic freeze chamber) and we get set up for a comfortable belay for the second pitch...

If only I had taken the deathly chill cave as an omen...

Not all who wander...

We woke up at seven and were out the door by eight, Jebby was packed to the brim with a bed roll, gear, and enough peanut butter and jelly sandwich supplies to last us for weeks.

The first morning drive was quiet, except for the sound of our somewhat-traditional pre-adventure cd playing. 

Our first stop was to our quaint (and somewhat kitschy) town of Leavenworth, we visited the Cheese Monger and ate our traditional picnic of cheese, apples, crackers and chocolate at a little park by the river. 

After such a scheduled semester, it was almost unnerving to have absolutely nothing solidly planned for the next several weeks. At some point we'd be in Seattle, some point Portland, Smith Rock, the beach, California, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and at some point we'd come home. 

The only strict plans were to fulfill our road trip bucket list, and only then could we return home to finish unpacking/settling in and start up our jobs, and saving money, and figuring out what we actually need to do with our lives in the near future. But, for the next few weeks, all we had to worry about was making the most of our time together wherever we may end up.

Little did I know, the first day of our little extended trip would start with an epic...

We're not dead!

We've just been otherwise preoccupied with some life living.

Day 4: Battleship and a campfire

Approaching battleship

 More (imposter :) ) lady bugs. They were this thick on all the rocks, it was near impossible to find a place to sit.

 The Grand! and Middle Teton

This was one of my favorite view points of the whole trip. 

We decided to forego sleeping on top of table rock (which ended up being a great idea, seeing as the wind rocked our worlds that night)

I finally had enough of being salty and gross, so an improvised shower took place. What you don't see is 3 feet upstream, this is all running straight out of a glacier. In other words, it was criminy cold! But felt sooo amazing.

Our last night at camp, we found a little geocache with a bunch of notes in it. We had a great time reading them and then hunkering down for the night.

Day 5, we woke up early and high tailed it out of there. Everyone fell asleep in the car with wet boots and pants after fording a river. 

It was an amazing trip, one that I hope to repeat again!

Day 3: Static

Did you know that cheetah print duct tape is actually cheaper than the plain ol' silver kind?

Because it is. And it prevents blisters like a dream.

Day three, we took our summit packs and headed on up to climb Static. There were tons of gorgeous streams, rivers, waterfalls and several sketchy snow bridges to cross.

The whole way up, Kugath kept saying how we weren't going to need ice axes because static was on the Southern side of this big saddle so it'd be getting more sun. So, we get to this saddle:

Here is what we were coming from:

Yes, those are wildflowers. The hike up was pretty mucky and muddy due to everything melting, so we were all excited to get some potentially dry ground.

This is what greeted us on the other side of the saddle:

Welcome to Mordor, yo.

Fortunately, we all made it to the top despite the fight against plummeting temperatures and fairly strong (we ended up finding out they were 40 mph gusts) winds.

One of the craziest phenomenons we saw while hiking in the Tetons, was what we later researched and found out to be convergent lady bugs:

On the tops of several of the peaks, we saw just stock piles of lady bugs. Apparently they all fly to an elevation that they deem good as a group and hang out there.

On the way back, Russ and I split from the group (it was planned, don't worry, we weren't just running amuck while everyone was worried or anything like that) and leisurely hiked back to camp.

 We were super glad to be heading back, I was pretty cold and I really don't warm up easily. So, we set up our tent (we had enough of getting rained on in sleeping bags. Been there, done that, moving on)

and just hung out:

Until our tent started to collapse from the weight of the rain. 

Russell ventured into the freeze and found us two sticks to finagle into place.

With the assistance of duct tape and a bra, of course.

We found out our tent is not water proof/resistant in any way shape or form, so we both scurried out to get our tarp out from underneath and rig it up above our tent. As we both got out of the tent, we looked up to see this guy:

He was only 5 feet away from us when we got out of the tent and actually started walking towards us, which (not gonna lie) freaked me out a little bit. I scared him off a little bit by sneaking back into the tent to grab my camera.