Adventures in Hiking

As many of you know I am currently on vacation in the great state of Colorado visiting a very dear friend of mine. For the protection of all those involved we will call her Juanita. You must understand that Juanita loves the outdoors sometimes I think more than life itself so I knew coming out here that there would be a fair amount of hiking involved in this trip. What you can never prepare for with Juanita is the adventures you will find yourself in.

Friday morning we arose from our beauty rest bright and early around 9:00am :). After a hearty breakfast we set out to explore a new park that Juanita had come across. As we pulled out of the parking lot frozen droplets of water (aka hail) started to fall from the sky. I looked at Juanita with a questioning stare but she assured me that it never rains for very long in Colorado. After a short drive we pulled into a gas station to quench Flash's (the truck's) thirst. As Juanita is standing beside Flash waiting for the pump to stop, while it is still raining mind you, she pops her head back in the door and says "Just so you know Colorado has the highest rate of death by lightening strike". She then smiles. Excuse me what. First you tell me it never rains long in Colorado (It's now been raining for 30 minutes at least) and now you tell me if ever I were to be struck dead by lightening it would be here. Suffice it to say I am not having a good feeling at this point.

But I trust my dear friend Juanita, after all we have been friends for many moons so we continue on. When we arrive at the state park it has indeed stopped raining but the clouds are still looming. So we hop out of the car make one last pit stop before heading off into the wilderness, and of course sign at the trail head in case you get eaten by a bear or mountain lion the rangers would like a heads up you are missing.

So we take off up the trail to explore, now we are taking it kind of easy cause the elevation in Colorado is a little higher than Iowa, but more on that in another post. So we mosey for about an hour and every once in a while there is a divide in the trail with a map and we mosey this way or that way. When all of the sudden we heard thunder. Juanita informs me that is when we turn around, so we head back down the trail (remember the high rate of lightening strikes). We probably made it no more than 10 steps when the sky opens up and the floods come down, so we start truckin it as fast as we can, when the frozen droplets come back. So Juanita says lets stand under this tree. Is anyone questioning whether or not that will help. I kind of did but I figured what the heck might as well try it. It did keep the frozen droplets off but when it started raining harder we figured we weren't gaining much and continued down the trail.

At this point we are soaked, our feet weighed 5 pounds more each because of the mud and my OCD is on full force. I can not stand the feeling of wet clothes touching me. We finally get to the point where we can see the trail head again and the rain stops. SERIOUSLY???? Mother nature has a terrible sense of humor.

Definitely an adventure to remember. We got home dried off and had a great afternoon, inside. The next day however was a fabulous hike, and much drier.