i like hikes: mount superior and monte cristo

so. last sunday i was telling ryan how i really wanted to go on a hike the next morning. 

around the same time i was catching up on everyone's blogs and saw this post on christine's blog.

i was dying at how beautiful her pictures were and knew that is actually where we had to go. so i texted her to make sure it really was as nice as it looked, she gave her approval, and the next morning we were headed to little cottonwood to hopefully see as nice of things as she did! 

it looked a little different with the leaves changing but it was still so pretty! so i actually took 400 photos. 

and i wish i was kidding. i haven't gone that photo happy in a really long time but i couldn't help myself. so here are a few (i'm using that word loosely) of my favorites from the day:

not even very high up yet and i was already satisfied.

maybe i'm real out of shape because this is how i felt half way up.

ryan likes exercise so he was fine.

but with magical sunglasses that made everything look (even) nicer and ryan playing a little lotr soundtrack on pandora, i didn't think too much about the incline and my heaving haha

 

my very own tree :)

ryan loved those.

well we both did.

if it wasn't freezing we would have stayed at the top longer buuut we were dying

so after ryan returned to virtue we went exploring a little lower to get away from the wind

found this great tree frame

and a nice rock to self time this photo

and these great rocks that i was obsessed with!

and found this one that i liked most. so i went to put it in my pocket, realized i didn't have one, and shoved it in my sports bra like any normal girl would do

 tmi i know. but it was real funny when i forgot about it and then found it later.

and these tree stumps

and a perfect ledge for eating lunch!

and the view everywhere we looked

and this cave

 

and beautiful wild flowers here and there. 

(and i'll just thank ryan right now for not even getting mad at me for stopping every five seconds to crouch down, take pictures, squeal with delight at how pretty everything was and precede to take even more)

this is real.

look how pretty big cottonwood was!

and i saw these little guys and new this picture had to happen

then looked up to show ryan how awesome the little guys looked but he was already heading to monte cristo..see him? maybe my enthusiasm for photographing nature finally got old..

so eventually i head over.

after trying to catch up i got to this point above, got half way up, freaked out, and lowered myself back down and sat on a rock until he decided to come back down.

(christine did we miss a trail of some sort? maybe we did or maybe i'm just a pansy. either way i have no idea how people get to the top of the peak in a non-dangerous way haha)

ryan's view of me and my rock.

after ryan got back down we marveled at how he got to the top of that peak and back down without dying. mountains are kind of scary when you forget to stay together!

after marveling we enjoyed the view some more

and i took one last baby flower picture

!!!

then headed back down. s is for sollis. and being sad about leaving.

and continued to freak out at how pretty it was the whole way down.
at first i was kind of nervous because it was real sunny and that is nice but overcast and cloudy is waaaay better. so even though it got kind of cold the weather was perfect and it just got better and better as each hour passed. and i'm serious when i say hours. ryan mapped it on his phone and we realized we averaged 80 minutes a mile and took six hours instead of two like we planned because we just loved it so much.

proof that we really took that long. an apparently our hike turned into a walk haha 

this is an enlarged view of the area around the number two. i laugh every time i look at it. 

so thank you christine for blogging and liking mountains so we could go on this great hike which we probably would have never gone on! everybody, it really was so great if you couldn't already sense my enthusiasm throughout the post - so if the weather remembers it is fall the rest of you should go on this hike and be really happy.