The plan was to setup camp and pick Emily up the next afternoon and bring her up. \240After that obstacle, the campsite had to be the best ever for me to be willing to cross that 3 more times. \240Turns out. This area wasn’t great, lake was low, \240it was terribly cold and very windy with ice forming around the lake. In the morning when the wind didn’t subside, I called it and we packed up. Thankfully I was able to squeeze to the left of the Rut and pass it as if it weren’t there.

Probably will never make it back up there. One of the first alpine setting I can confidently make that claim.

While setting up camp, the boys found plenty of rocks to Boulder on, a tree to balance on, and a pebbles to play a new game called bowly rock, which is like skipping rocks but on the ground.

The happiness captured in this snippet of Tommy is the pure joy and freedom of being a kid. It’s the feeling I strive for them to have with all of these adventures.

The car camping setup is dialed in pretty good. If I had known we would’ve had two cars, I probably would’ve wayover packed. Rock climbing gear and bouldering pad and hammocks but sometimes these places the novelty of a new place is all you need for entertainment.

The next morning we drove over to devils head.

That night was pretty surreal. After Emily and the kids went to bed and I waited for the fire to die down. A guy from the next camp over got hammered drunk or on drugs and was convinced he saw Bigfoot. He called 911 as he walked on the road in the Direction of our camp. At first I thought it was two people and was pretty pissed, yet again, we could hear people at the next camp over. But that didn’t make sense because it was like 200-300 yards away. He was on the phone for about 45 mins explaining how he wasn’t crazy. \240

Two sherif cars lit up the forest like it was day time. It was actually too impressive to be annoyed. \240Then an ambulance and fire truck and some other cars. \240I’m super glad someone came, but for this one guy there was no less than 15 first responders. They were around for less than an hour and just as fast as they showed up and made the forest seem like the south side of Chicago, they were gone and it was eerie being back in the peace of the wilderness so fast.

That night it was tremendously windy and the storm front was coming in. Everything in Our tent was pretty covered in sand and dust. The wind was strong enough to blow it in the tent through the mesh. But everything outside was actually windswept clean .