Mark Finally Speaks

I realize after several months now of Stacy asking me to enter something on this blog, I still haven't. So I thought I would try only to realize that I don't have anything I want to say necessarily at this moment. I guess if I start typing I can ramble on incoherently incohesively and maybe eventually I will get to a point.

I've been busily finalizing baby's room. I have to say I am happy with the results. I think I might volunteer to get up a few nights when baby is crying just so I can sleep in the baby's room. I got to do a little work with kids themed rooms when I was working with the custom homes in Utah, but this is even cooler because I did all of the design and work myself and it is going to be for our own kid. I'm excited for babies arrival. It has been an amazingly fast 6+ months, seems like yesterday we were finding out Stacy was pregnant.

Since then we've been to Utah 2 more times, I attempted to climb Mt. Whitney(which was not successful due to my inability to acclimatize to the elevation), and we've had two wonderful visits from family(Jensen's and Evan's). We currently are suffering soooo much to wake up to freezing temperatures in the 40's and I really struggle when I come out from work at night and I have to carry my coat in my arms because it is a super cold 60 degrees. It's frigid in Phoenix what can I say. I guess this is what we get to enjoy after suffering through the oven we call Summer here.

Stacy really wants me to talk about the bears in California. I guess I've told the story enough that I haven't wanted to repeat it again. When I went to California to hike Mt. Whitney with my friend Brian from college. I flew into LA Sunday afternoon and rented a car to drive 3 hours north to a camp ground at the trail head where I met up with Brian who had driven down from the bay area.

To preface the Sierra Nevadas, they are very tall pointy peaks(kind of remind me of Jackson Hole mountains) and there is a native there that likes to create havoc with campgrounds and unknowledgeable guests. I had been at the campground less than 30 minutes when it was getting dark. Brian had his gear on the picnic table and I'd carried my things over as well. We had a large metal box to put all of our food in to keep away from bears. I didn't think we'd need to right away and we went to fill up on water to cook dinner.

In that short time when we returned, we stumbled upon this big black shadow with its nose in Brians food bag. I started making noise while Brian did the most important thing and pulled out his camera and started taking pictures, which we learned afterwards revealed there was not only 1 bear within 10 feet of us but another 2 in the distance behind a tree. The bear finally ran off and we quickly realized we could not underestimate the bears and leave food out longer than to prepare it.

Thinking we probably hadn't seen the end of them because they'd stolen food from Brian's bag we started moving our gear away from food items and putting anything we weren't going to eat for dinner into the food box. We walked up to the cars to make sure they had nothing in them that the bears would attempt to get at. Coming back to the picnic table we found another bigger bear with its front paws up on top of my back pack which was on top of the food box. I realized I had forgotten to take out some granola bars from one of the pockets and I could see the bear drooling on the bag already. I didn't want to be hiking with a bag that I had to stitch back together so I reacted by grabbing a big rock and throwing it at the bear(I know really smart thing to do). It missed the bear but hit the metal food box and made a loud sound. The bear dropped down and with some more noise and flashes from Brian's camera it and another bear hovering at the edge of our camp area ran up over a little rise above us. We followed them up to the road to make sure they left. We got a picture of 3 bears, one obviously being a bigger male and then a mother with a cub. I think we were lucky to only have lost some of Brian's food and my bag got some teeth marks into it.

We were very excited at this point so when we calmed down a little we walked out of the campground trying to find a spot where I had phone service to call our wifes. After getting Stacy worked up thinking I was going to be bear food and Brian promising to bring back the bear for his daughter Mariah we headed back down to bed and luckily had no other run ins the rest of our hike.

I will spare a lengthy summary. The hike was amazing, beautiful fall colors(which we don't get much of in Phoenix) and snow covered peaks and very cold temperatures(comparative) to the 90's that we still had back in Arizona in October. We got lost from the trail one time and hiked an extra 2 miles up a hill with our packs on that I think wore me out so I couldn't fully recover and adjust to the elevation. We camped at about 12,000 feet along with the other 50 people up on the hill attempting to summit the next day with us. We were told it was supposed to drop down to below 10 degrees that night, but I didn't feel cold at all so whatever it got to it didn't bother me. Early the next morning we got up and I only made it up the switchbacks another 800 feet in elevation when I started feeling rather sick. Rather than risk more problems I had to turn around and go back to my tent where I slept some and started to feel better. I was disappointed to not make it, but I will return and next time I will be better prepared.

Well this is the end of my endurance typing. I told my bear story so Stacy can be content. Until later I shall sign off.