Labor Day!

What a jam packed labor day weekend and following week I had....On Friday before Labor Day, Dustin and I packed up the minivan and drove the long 8 hours over to spend a couple nights at Big Bend National Park here in Texas. Most people don't know much about this park, but it is the 15th largest National park in the USA (probably the least visited too). The reason being is that there is not really a great way to get there...no nearby airports, etc. We have talked about going to Big Bend really since we started dating and well it took almost 7 years to finally make it there! We drove into the park late on Friday...there is this long stretch of desolate road that takes you from Ft. Stockton into the park called 385. At the hour we were driving there was NOBODY else on the road with us. Sadly, because the road has no lighting, I think my lovely white minivan attracted birds to come toward us...needless to say a couple birds lost their little lives that night as they literally flew straight into the grill of my van :-( It freaked us out the first time, because when you see something the size of a bird flying directly at the car your first instinct is to swerve...thankfully Dustin did not do that or else we would have been stranded on the side of the road in the desert with no cell service! We made it to our campsite and got situated...we "princess" camped as someone told us...AKA we brought a queen size blow up mattress and with the sto-n-go seats in my van we slept inside in the back the 2 nights we were there. It was great! I think the people who saw our set up were pretty jealous ;-)
While we were at Big Bend we did some hiking (of course) and our first and only full day there we hiked up to Emory Peak which is the tallest point in Big Bend (~7800 ft). It was about a 12 mile round trip hike that we did since we went up one way and came down another. I was shocked at how rain forest-ish the trail was...not desert-like at all. Of course the park had just gotten 2 days of rain right before we arrived. It was a good hike...not many people on the trail. At the top, Dustin and I realized the truth in the saying that you CAN have too much of a good thing. Reason being is as we were climbing to the peak we noticed quite a few lady bugs around and I was saying how cute they were, etc...little did I know that at the top they were swarming everywhere. By the time we were headed down the trail I never wanted to see one of those things again...I was completely creeped out by them!!! So the moral is too much of anything can be freaky!!! Once we got back to camp we realized that this no shower camping was gonna be pretty annoying. The closest showers were 60 miles round trip away from us. We both ended up giving ourselves "sink showers" though which I guess was good enough! We headed over to the Chisos lodge restaurant and proceeded to drink our Bud Light lime and watch my poor Sooners lose their first game to BYU....Sam we need you back soon buddy!
The next day (our last morning in Big Bend) we headed over to see Santa Elena's Canyon which basically separates the USA and Mexico from eachother with the Rio Grand flowing in between. We met up with a park ranger and he filled us in on some interesting facts as well. Unfortunately because of the rains they had gotten, we were unable to do the hike there. So, after a couple other stops we headed back to Austin that day.

Emory Peak Trail

Awwww....

Amazing Views

Emory Peak

Too much!!! Yikes!

Santa Elena Canyon

Muddy Water...too high to cross

On Labor Day Monday, we got to meet up with some friends and celebrate Denise's birthday with her at Hula Hut. It was the perfect day to sit on the outside deck and have some cold drinks.

Hula Hut for Denise's B-day

That night I hit the hay as early as possible since I had a 6:30 AM flight to Denver for work. We had a regional meeting in Vail all week at this AMAZING resort called Arrabelle. It was incredible!!!! The week went by in a flash and while we were there I actually even got to get a hike in with some friends. The weather was perfect too! Our last night there we all got to take the gondolas up the mountain to eat dinner at the restaurant on top of the mountain. It was beautiful and so much fun. I am so lucky to have the job I do and to have made such great friends through work.

The LARGEST shower I have ever seen!

On top of the Arrabelle hotel- where the pool was!

The San Antonio District

Nicole & me

Kori & me on top of Vail Mountain

Dinner on top of the mountain

The meeting finished Friday and I pulled into my driveway around 11:30 PM just in time for sleepy night night time. Awesomely I was greeted in Texas with rains galore. So far this weekend it has just been raining and raining...gosh we need it. In other random news, last night we sold our boat. It was kind of sad, but if you know my husband at all, you know that he is not afraid to buy and sell things. It wasn't our first boat and it surely won't be our last. A family from the Dallas area drove down to buy it from us and it was nice to find out that a fellow Sooner will be enjoying the boat :-) Thankfully we had something to be happy about when we met since we kicked Idaho's butt 64-0.