Hitch Numero Uno!

This week I had my first real hitch of the year.  It was 4 days long and we went to the Spring Mountains to work on a trail called in the Middle Kyle Canyon.  We had to get a key to open the gate since we would be camping in an area that's not open to the public, so it was really cool knowing that we were the only people around.  Here's where I slept every night... pretty freakin sweet.

We had to hike a mile or so from camp to get to the trail we were working on everyday which was a nice morning wake up.  The trail was already created by a machine but there are huge berms on the side (piles of rocks and things) so the water gets trapped.  So we basically had to get rid of the berm, build a better back slope and tear out all of the trees and stubs in the path.  It was reallyyy hard work.  By the end of the hitch everyone was covered in dirt, sweat, scratches and blisters.  But it was a lot of fun!  Every time it was getting harder I just looked around and remembered where I was.  There were 10 of us working everyday (2 crews) and by the end of the trip guess how many miles of trail we finished?  0.3.  I was surprised that it was so little but apparently for the amount of time we spent working that is pretty good.  Of course it rained every day at about 2:30 exactly but Wednesday was the only day we had to take a 2 hour lightning break.  I'm starting to get a little suspicious about the so called dryness and lack of rain here.  The mountain weather is pretty dang cool though and I have about a trillion cloud pictures from the last few days. 

Other than working we'd get back to camp at 6ish, cook a delicious dinner, hang out for a little and then go to bed by 8:30.  It's funny how okay everyone is with just passing out after dinner and somehow 9 hours of sleep a night still isn't enough... I didn't think I'd start going to bed that early until at least retirement.  We got back Friday evening but normally we work Monday through Thursday and then have Thursday night through Sunday off, I CAN'T WAIT.

This weekend we only had 2 days off (a regular weekend just doesn't cut it for me) because of memorial day last week.  Since one of my roommates is on an 8 day hitch this week it was just my other roommate Jake and I home so we decided to go hiking on this Gold Strike Trail which is filled with hot springs and leads to the Colorado river right next to the Hoover dam.  This was one of the coolest places I've ever been, I was literally in awe the entire time.  A lot of the trail was so hard we had to climb down boulders and there was a rope tied on so you had to levy yourself up/down.  I'm covered in bruises.  There was this rocky peninsula that you had to walk through the water to get to so we decided to camp out there. There were rocks to jump from and giant fish and hot water splirting out of these colorful cliffs, it was so cool.  Unfortunately I was dumb enough to try and cowboy camp since setting my tent up sounded like a lot of work, and it ended raining the whole night.  Probably the worst sleep I've ever had especially since I kept waking up hearing animals scurrying around me and thinking of an escape plan for when a mountain lion approached.  Luckily I didn't have to put that plan into action because it was a bad one. I don't know what picture to add since none of them really show how beautiful it was but that's the rocky thing I camped on!  Oh and I just got a phone call from a guy saying that he found this message in a bottle that I threw into the river yesterday.  I'm so excited, I didn't think anyone would find it or call me to return it as I requested... maybe it's a sign that he's my soulmate?