Thursday, August 26, 2010

Upper and Lower Palisades

Lacey and I had been planning for a long time to go camping. While we enjoy camping, it is one of those events that would always take the back seat when some other event came along. We resolutely decided to reserve August 20 and 27 to camp.

I had gone on a brief day trip, so I got home later than expected. It was already 6 p.m. when we decided to start packing. The plan was we would pack, then go to the Teryaki shack for dinner (also to be our lunch for the next day beacuse they dish out servings so large), buy some wood and additional camping supplies, then head off. By the time that we finished all of these errands and took off, it was already 7:45.

We arrived at the campground after dark, and all of the camp sites were full, but we found the very last site on the whole ground. Under the light of the car, we set up the tent and set up our things inside. We ate our dinner, and prepared for the campfire desert. (Oh right here I give a shout out to Boy Scouts, because I was thus able to make a fire and set up the tent.)
The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Widescreen Edition)
Lacey doesn't like marshmallows a lot, so we bought one of those stove top popcorns things that blows up the aluminum bag, and then watched the Chronicles of Narnia (I know that's really rugged-like isn't, taking a laptop).

Part of the purpose of going to the palisade lakes was so we could hike up to the actual lakes. The trail follows the Palisades creek all the way up. It is about 6 miles to the lower lake, and then another 3 miles to the upper lake. We got to the lower lake and definitely wanted to go on. Did you know that the upper lake is called upper because it is higher, by like 600 feet. That was quite a switch back trail to take to get up there.

MSR HyperFlow MicrofilterNow the other slightly stupid thing that I did, was I forgot to take my water filter. There water taps at the campground, and I thought for some reason that between our two 1 L water bottles, it'd be enough for the 18 mile hike. Bad idea. We ran out of water before we even made it to the upper lake. We got back to the camp and were parched every muscle and bone ached. We packed up went home, and after refreshing showers and baths, we both popped an 800 mg ibuprofen and went to bed. It was a great weekend.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

One of those starts

Have you ever gone to a lesson where they talked about journal writing or keeping your personal history, so you went home and made an entry with a zealous entry like this: "Wow, it's been a long time since I have written in here. I'm going to try and write everyday from now on." Then sadly, you see a near identical entry several months later. Well, this may be like that.

As we approach our year anniversary, we have learned a little about our families' distinctive ways of communicating. In the Allen family we call and spend thae majority of conversation updating one another on what has happened since we last talked. Lacey has dubbed this, "Allen Updating." What I'm' going to try and do is use this blog as our Allen Update center. Let's hope the zeal doesn't die off quickly.