Goat Lake

I love backpacking and hiking. I guess when I say things like that, I am opening myself to things I do not understand. Don't worry, I will explain myself.

A few months ago, Stephen decided that he wanted to take me to his favorite boyhood lake spot, Goat Lake. Me, being all for outdoorsy stuff, made it a go. We invited Shane and Krystal and Morgan. Jess didn't want to go...maybe she was the smart one.

On our way to Goat Lake we drove through Idaho City where we were introduced to the meaning of junk. Look at this house we passed! It was SO cool!

Here are a few up close an personal shots of the house. These little dolls looked really creepy. On the other side of the house they had a old toilet just sitting on the lawn. They also had one of those old wire spools. The really big ones. Growing up my siblings, cousins, and I would make clubhouses out of them. Occasionally we would roll the kids around in them. They didn't know what they were getting into.

After the long three hour drive we finally came to the trail head. Off we went on our adventure. The week before Krystal and I had figured out the menu and felt pretty confident that we had enough for and the right utensils to cook it. We felt pretty confident.

After hiking for about an hour, I was the normal 'I've been hiking for an hour tired'. I think that I still looked pretty good! What do you think?

This is where we crossed over to the Goat Lake trail. This was when I still had my innocence. See?...I'm still excited.

We had been hiking for about four hours when we met a couple coming down from Goat Lake. They had gone for an afternoon and had lunch. We asked the guy how much further we had to go. He laughed and said, "About 1200 feet." When I heard this, I was all kinds of excited. We were almost there! Later on down the trail I realized why he had laughed. He meant 1200 feet in elevation.

With only a 1/3 of a mile to go we literally hit a rock wall. I looked up as the guys said that we were now going to have to bear crawl up to the top. AAHHHHHH!!!!!! I had been at the end of the pack for the whole hike. Hello!! I'm the slowest, but for the bear crawl I was in front. I guess they figured that if I slipped and fell, there were four other people underneath me that could catch me.

The beginning of the bear crawl was the worst. You had to climb up this slick, flat rock covered in gravel. When I had gone about a foot I started to yell...I WAS SLIPPING!! Krystal was right underneath/behind me. She literally pushed me up that stupid thing. It wasn't more than five or six feet on the slick part, but it was enough to make me spaz out. I MADE IT!! And here I am blogging about it.

When we got to the top of the bear crawl I was dead. Seriously, I was so tired. I was ready to set up camp right there. Here, see? This picture video are proof. I couldn't even smile I was so tired!

Stephen is still chipper. Look at him! Didn't even phase him. He's still smiling...I'm dead. It was a beautiful hike though. I will give them that.

That night we had tin foil dinners. Krystal and I made and cooked them on Thursday night and had them frozen to put in our bags to hike with on Friday. We hoped that having them cooked before, we would just warm them up on the fire and eat them. I think that we made a couple of mistakes with the potatoes. Stephen was the first one to open them up and this is what he got.

The potatoes were gray! Krystal and I definitely need to fix that for the next hiking trip. However Morgan said that they were the best gray potatoes that he had ever eaten. Thanks Morgan!

Krystal and my job was to purify the water. That took forever! All we had was the purification water bottles that Dad had given us for Christmas. We filled one up with water and then put one water purification tablet in it. We then squirted the water into a separate bottle and let it sit for thirty minutes and then added another tablet and let it dissolve. We did that for about seven bottles. It took a while.

The next morning Krystal and Shane were off fishing and the boys found there play spot. Watch the video. It's hilarious!

The lake that we were camped around was beautiful and still had a lot of snow around it. It was so blue. Look at our pretty pictures!

On our way down the mountain Stephen took a lot of beautiful pictures. It really was nice being out in the middle of nowhere.

At the end of our hike we took a triumph picture. We made it!

On the drive home we had a special present for us. Stephen's car overheated! Driving up and down those hill wasn't something that Bell (Stephen's car) enjoyed. We had to stop every 10 minutes to fill in up with water until we got to a store and could purchase anti-freeze/coolant. Don't worry...we made it home alive and safe. Yeah for Goat Lake!