Today I got home from our wards trek "experience." I went there not wanting to go and came home not wanting to ever go out in the desert ever again.
We had to meet at the church at 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning. that was so great to be up and at 'em that early in the morning. And like you all know when they tell you that they are leaving the church at 6:30 you know that you wont get out of there until at least 7. So of course we left about 7 o'clock and drove for an hour out to the far and distant land of Elberta, Utah. We arrived at our destination at like 8 ish and then like we all are complete morons they explain to us how to pull a hand cart. I kinda zoned off during this part because of course I am not a moron and i know how to pull a stupid handcart, it really isn't that hard. So we started out at probably about 10:30 and it was already hot! I know to you tough Arizonians that 95 degrees doesn't sound like it is very hot, but to us it is scorching!
So the first day on the trail was alright. It was hot and all but i was pulling with my friends so it was okay. I learned something that day. I learned that I am a horrible judge of mileage that i have walked. Our first stop was at about an hour in and i was thinking that we were making pretty good time because we had to go like 10 miles the first day and i thought that we had gone about 3 or 4 so far and so we only had about 4 or 5 hours left until we were going to be at camp for the night. But much to my surprise i found out that we hadn't quite gone 2 miles yet. I was in for a huge shock on this trip. So me and Taylor (my pulling partner) just started talking and got into a zone and just started to haul. We got to our camping spot way before anyone else did in our ward so we just sat there and relaxed.
That night we had a chicken chase that was pretty intense! There were 10 chickens running wild 30 kids running after them! I would have liked to be a spectator because I could probably guarantee we were pretty entertaining to watch! So finally when we caught them all we cooked them up and ate 'em. We cooked everything out there in dutch ovens. Personally i think we should have gotten a different cook but what can you do when you are out in the middle of no where?
The next day me and Taylor got stuck in second place because all the people said that we were going to fast and that they couldn't keep up. We were thinking, "Well that sounds like a personal problem to me but we got in trouble if we tried to pass the front cart. I heard that there was supposed to be a part of the trail that was going to have water covering it. When we came up on the part of the trail that was completely and totally flooded i was like, "Wow. You have got to be kidding me!" The whole entire road was under about a foot of water for as far as i could see. I was later informed that this was not part of the plan. We were only supposed to have about 20 feet of road that was flooded and that this was a broken water pipe that had flooded the road. The submerged road was about a quarter mile long. That was another "experience" we had. That night we had to wait like 6 million hours for dinner. I was starving so I decided to go in my tent and eat the snacks that I had that I wasn't supposed to have but i did. So I am eating those when this leader walks by my tent and looks in so I had to just huck my granola bar into my bucket and play it off like i was just rubbing my face and I got a really weird look from my leader but i pulled it off! But Taylor had the greatest idea how to sneak food into a camp out when we aren't supposed to. He got his pillow and cut the end of it open. Stuffed his food in with the cotton stuffing inside of his pillow. He sewed up the pillow and put it back into his pillow case and no one knew. I thought that that was a ingenious idea! Later that night we had a testimony meeting that turned into a meeting of our leaders just telling stories about pioneers. So 3 HOURS LATER!!! We got out of there at midnight and didn't get to bed until about 12:30 and didn't get to sleep until like 1 then in the morning.
When the bugle went off at 6:30 in the morning I wanted to kill someone! We got up and we only had like a half mile to go so it wasn't that bad but when we got to the end we had a pretty good breakfast but the food on this whole thing was not by any means great food. My dad said that the guy who was in charge of the food went over budget alot. By the taste of the food he didn't go over on good food that's for sure.
When I got home everyone was at the church with signs and everything waiting for us. I am so glad that I am home!
Don't the kids look like they are having such a great time!
Oh yeah! I cant forget about the best part! I got the sweetest V neck tan line EVER!!! We had to wear a long sleeve shirt and mine was button up so I just unbuttoned the top few buttons and I got the sweet tan line!
