Hiking and canyons and bears, Oh my!

Holy cannoli cakes! Where did this summer go? It just slipped past without me realizing it was nearly gone and BAM, labor day hit. Labor day is such a lovely holiday! Luckily neither Pat nor I had to do any laboring (though I must say if babies were involved, I really wouldn't have minded the laboring part! but alas no babies . . . yet . . .) So we threw together a delicious picnic, a puppy and a cute baby (FYI=recipe for happiness when mixed with sunshine, mountains and butterflies) and headed up to Shenandoah!

The picnic was made even more special by two things: one: the enticing aroma of grilling hots and hams going on around us (it did make me contemplate pillaging, but only for the first 15 minutes), and two: we ended up picnicking near a GERMAN family! And the German family was speaking real live German! I am not ashamed to say I did eavesdrop (and on purpose) the entire time . . .  though the only word I really understood was entschuldigung. . . Please don't tell Frau Schueller.

The strangest thing  we saw was a couple who brought only one thing for their entire picnic lunch: A big ol' carry out box of pizza. Maybe they forgot there were no microwave ovens up there.

And then we headed to the White Oak Canyon trail. It is a gorgeous trail and one of our favorites! Kateri probably thought there was something eerily familiar about the whole trip because she had hiked it before, in utero.

You can see Kateri does love the whole hiking experience . . . not sure about Wrigley . . . We hiked on a little ways past the halfway point (which I am inordinately proud about . . . it meant we went OVER five miles altogether, and the way back is 99.9% up hill, which means: great leg workout!).

We found this rock cliff that had ice-cold water pouring over it. Pat couldn't resist the temptation to stick his head under the water.

 

Yes. He said next time he will stick his whole body under (but he will take of his shoes and socks first. This is a wise hiker-man).

 

 

And because we are still in our happy honeymoon stage, we have to take lots of the selfies . . . together . . .

 

 

Oh man. You gotta love that face!

 

 

Oh the way back we saw another unusual sight . . . Can you tell what was lurking above us??

 

 

 

Pat was not enthused. He hustled us all out asap. There is apparently some story you can find online involving a certain aggressive carnivore's  affinity for a special delicacy (read: breastmilk). I have yet to look it up because there are some things I'd just really rather not know. Speaking of which, Pat and I were talking about hiking, which led to Mount Everest and what is involved in hiking it and what the chances are of dying. That brought us to the question of, "How many people die attempting to climb Everest every year?". So of course I looked it up on the way home. Did you know that 15 to 20 people die EVERY YEAR??!! This is considered "good odds" because it is a 'huge improvement' to what it used to be. Apparently, roughly 2000 people hike it yearly. There are some really morbid fascinating stories of people who have died, Green Boots is probably the most well known. The altitudes are so high they often cannot retrieve the bodies, and they remain as landmarks in shockingly good condition, thus hikers would notice as they walked by Green Boots. Creepy. However, there a lots of tragic sad stories that I read out loud to Pat, and eventually he just nicely asked me to shut-up already because this is horrible subject matter and really depressing(and he was right) so we turned to more lighthearted matters (how deep is the Grand Canyon). Do you have any idea how deep it is? I was shocked when I learned its average depth. This world is full of wonders!