From June 30th to July 21st I was on the trail with my awesome ROCS crew. We had 5 outstanding girls and 3 outstanding weeks on the trail. It was just such an amazing time. We had so much fun together, I learned so much from them and hopefully they learned some nuggets from us too. We got to hike all over the ranch, (130+ miles) summit awesome peaks, (Baldy, Philips, Tooth of Time) and share countless laughs and funny stories in between. This is not to say that we did not have our struggles and fair share of rough days. But all in all it was magnificent and super rewarding and challenging.
I'm sad that that's the only trek Sarah and I get to lead this summer. We would love to lead another session.
When we get off from leading this 3 week adventure Sarah and I got a whole week off. We had been coming up with a list of things we wanted to do when we got back. This list included things such as getting massages, eating at Panera, and seeing Finding Dory. We thought that we would drive to Denver and do a National Parks loop in Colorado/Utah/Wyoming. But as we were planning, our imaginations started to run wild. We were looking at flying to Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Puerto Rico just to name a few. We thought "go big or go home" we ran into some snaffoos with these plans especially in the lodging and rental car department. We thought driving might be the better option.
So after about 5 hours of planning we had narrowed it down to two options A) flying to San Francisco or B) driving to Los Angeles and going to DISNEYLAND. It was really hard to decide between the two but the draw of having a car and going somewhere we had both never been was too strong and we stared driving west the next morning.
Our first stop was the Grand Canyon. And boy was it grand! It was such an awesome place to visit. We got to see sunset and sunrise over the canyon, it was breathtaking. We camped just outside the park and headed on the next morning to Anaheim, CA.
The first thing we did with our full day in CA was massages. We followed that with the Hollywood sign and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Our last full day we went to Channel Islands National Park. The park has a very interesting history and it was beautiful. Santa Cruz island is the only place in the world where you can find the Island Scrub Jay! We even saw a pod of dolphins on the boat ride as well as a flying fish and a whale!!
The drive back to Philmont was broken up over the last two days with a night camping at Homolovi State Park in Arizona and stops in Petrified Forest National Park and Santa Fe.
It was a crazy and exhausting week. We came back saying that we needed a vacation from our vacation. If the week was supposed to refresh us from our 3 week trek...it didn't. But I am sure that it was the most fun thing we could have done. I can't think of anyone better to do it with than my awesome partner. We've together for 4 weeks straight now and I wouldn't change it for the world. It really was super memorable and totally worth all the dollars spent and hours in the car.
Now that we are back at Philmont things feel really strange. We've been gone for a month but it seems like nothing has changed. Things are starting to wind down from the summer and it's so weird. We have to go back to doing what we did before ROCS. But my last working day is August 15th. It's all going so quick but yet so slow.
