Labor Day - Well Stated

Labor Day - some may consider this a break from the labors of work. I, however, took the day literally and decided to work my butt off! How you ask? Well, with the help of a trusty husband and equally irresponsible younger sister - we worked it this past weekend and hiked the mountains!

I include this image to show how non-sweaty and pretty we still look. Please refer back once you see the "after."

The hike started out innocent enough - pleasant inclines and a brief jaunt to a cool-ish tee-pee and a waterfall. Things went horribly wrong somewhere around this beautiful waterfall!

You see, my irresponsible sister and I forgot our water bottles on this "lovely" 90+ degree day and relied on my lovely Brian for water support. He, being the ever prepared wilderness man had a full camel-back backpack with water for all of us! We even got to refill at a drinking fountain near the waterfall! We felt hydrated, fit and ready for a challenge. Cue the labor part of this Labor Day.

Rather than take the easy way home and backtrack on the trail, we decided to push ahead and take the long way...turns out the long way is an entirely up hill battle. To get out of the park you have to hike up and around the entire f-ing mountain! That was bad. What was worse - the entire uphill path has NO shade. Like not even a little. Buckets of sweat later, I sat defeated on the side of a hill demanding that we turn around. Brian, with map-in-hand clearly shows that just one more turn and we will be on flat land and near the car.

So...I walked one more turn. You know what I saw? More uphill mountain. About this time, Emily started feeling the defeat as well. As we dragged our feet in the dirt, heaving our bodies on, we discussed the possibilities of Brian not really knowing where he was going. Emily started sharing horror stories she'd heard of boyscouts getting lost on hikes and dying in the wilderness. Brian grew frustrated!

He decided we were in mild heat stroke and low blood sugar. He busted out some Cliff Gel Packs - they are like little low-calorie drinks of heaven. Well, they actually tasted like disgusting, hot candy (to me) or delicious hot fudge sauce (to Em). Anyways, they are full of caffeine to give you a burst of energy. I think they were designed for people who were really hot and tired on the side of a mountain!

Not event 10 minutes later we were hiking like champs! We were also past the worst of the uphill battle and had made it to even ground. Not sure what the saving grace was...but we made it back to the car!

I really liked how this picture showed hos disgusting Em and I got compared to the pre-sweat before picture!

Now it was time for another life-risking move...Emily was driving us home...