Banana Slugs=The Next Big Thing

Weeeelll...a Happy 4th of July to everyone. Hope everyone had a good one and didn't blow off any hands...or limbs in general. Yes I know...this is a very, very late blog. But it's been a busy day. But here I am!
John and I went camping at Lake Crescent in the Olympics from Thursday to Saturday...which was awesome. Simply great. Every time I do anything with John I feel like I'm on vacation cuz he always has everything covered and I basically have to just show up and bring clothes and I'm set. Makes me feel like a little kid...he always has little lunches all ready and snacks. Hehe...Little kid in the best sense. You're so cute John.
We went to a picnic thing for John's work on Thursday briefly and then we took off and got on the road to Lake Crescent. I've gotta say I didn't know what to expect with the combination of John and camping. I wasn't sure how rugged we were talking about. But it turned out to be a lot less rugged than I was expecting...a good medium really. Nice and tame for our first camping trip together. We set up camp and once we got everything all ready to go it was around dinner time so we had hamburgers and hot dogs and then we went to bed. Yes...that early. We're like an old couple. I think we probably fell asleep by 10ish. The next morning John made me pancakes (yay) and coffee. We planned to hike Pyramid Mountain and I think we got going around noonish. As one online resource said, "Pyramid Mountain is among the highest peaks in Washington State with a trail to its summit." You heard the man. It was a gorgeous hike. Around 3.5 miles each way. We ran across quite a few banana slugs along the way which we lavished with the flashes of our cameras. We saw one that was munching happily on some fungus and you could actually watch him (it) chew. It was so cute! I mean cool...Oh and speaking of cameras I had a little scare with my camera. I thought I broke it! I almost wet myself. The auto-focus stopped working. And NOTHING I did could fix it. Well...after almost wetting myself, I pulled myself together and figured "hey I can't do anything about it right now...so...chill..." so the hike continued (it just turned out that a switch got pumped and it was fine after all...). A little before this discovery we had passed several people who said they weren't going any further cuz it looked too dangerous. Sure enough around the corner was a huge landslide that had washed away a large part of the trail. The only foot room left was around a foot wide and completely made of sand. And this thing was steep. Like...REALLY steep. So we wiggled our way across...and I rarely have a problem with hikes...but I was scared. And it really surprised me. This is the first time I've had this problem. And I realized after crossing it the second time to get back down the mountain...that it never crossed my mind to pray. I've never had that happen before. I've never faced something that scared me and NOT thought "oh I should pray"...and I realized the reason I was so afraid is because I didn't pray...every other time I've done anything that made me nervous I just prayed and was fine. That really frustrated me...and still continues to bother me...that I've gotten that behind in the prayer department. Honestly...I hate it. And I'm not going to let it continue.
After we passed the landslide we continued up the trail and stopped for lunch. We got to what looked like the ridge/top and John even said so. The land completely leveled out and you could see the sky on both sides...but I had this funny feeling we weren't there cuz I kept seeing this shadow ahead and sure enough we started climbing again. I got pretty cranky and John was kinda frustrated too so he pulled out the map to see how much further we had. It looked about half a mile. We were both frustrated but John told me he was fine either way and he wanted me to decide what we should do...either continue to the top or turn around. He'd be fine with whatever I chose. That really impressed me...that he'd let me choose...even though we were so close...and I could easily wimp out and say "let's go home"...but I hate not finishing something and we WERE so close. So we continued on and finally, FINALLY got to the top. At first we couldn't see anything cuz there was a full fog/cloud cover. You couldn't tell if the ground was a foot down or 3 miles below...but slowly bit by bit the clouds began to clear and within minutes they were all gone revealing the BEAUTIFUL view before us. It was definitely worth it. SO pretty. We took tons of pictures and John found a creepy old WWII watch tower at the very end of the trail. We parked under some trees and ate some beef jerky and rested after taking pictures. Before we started back down, John went out on a little ledge to take in the view one last time and take more pictures...I was just WAITING for him to fall so I had to get an adrenaline rush and rescue him...but he was fine and came back to me and we headed back down. We had made me a walking stick earlier in the hike which helped a lot going down. I think I have weak ankles...I always seem to twist my ankle on the way down from hikes. Whatever. We got back to the campsite around...8? And we wasted no time making dinner and chowing down. We had gotten some sparklers (cuz I have a secret fascination with them) to light for the 4th on our way to Lake Crescent. While buying them I was in mid-sentence about a fire cracker I set off when I was like 6 years old in China and it was a pagoda...when I SAW THAT VERY fire cracker! So we got one...we never got a chance to light the sparklers or the pagoda because firecrackers weren't allowed at the campsite and we were too tired when we got home...so we'll probably do them next weekend. So back to the story...we ate dinner and talked for awhile...and we ONLY got annoyed with each other once the entire trip and it was right then after dinner because I wanted to clean up so we could go to bed and John was all talkative. I kept reminding him that we needed to clean up and then he'd keep talking and slowly it was getting darker and darker until the fire was the only light. And I could just envision giant bears behind our camping chairs sniffing our pans and stuff. But thankfully we survived and nothing ate us...and we didn't get TOO cranky with each other. The next day we cleaned up, packed up and went to Sol Duc Hot Springs which was a really nice ending to a great weekend. Hot Springs + Achy Muscles = SO good. We got home, got cleaned up and watched Unleashed, one of my favorite movies. SO good. The next day we bummed around (or I should say I bummed around) which was much needed. And here I am! Even though we had a long weekend it went by too quickly...as good times usually do. I'd include pictures from our adventure but my camera battery is dead so I gotta charge it to upload anything.
I'm now home...listening to Jennifer Knapp, watching the sun gaze lazily through my shades...thinking about going back to school, calligraphy and debt. Always an interesting combination. My flowers John bought me last weekend are sadly wilting...but it's all good. They were beautiful.
Well...I'm going to wrap this up. So...consider it...wrapped up.