Sushi Always Works

It has been lovely to get back home and into the swing of things in Prescott.  Good friends have really made the summer worthwhile.  My good buddy Nikil just came back from India. It is a good thing because a month in a half is far too long to go without hearing phrases like “Get yo’ autograph with Kwame Jackson.” I guess no one else will really understand that one. It was more than great to catch up. Sometimes in life, you just have to spend an afternoon making up impractical but subtly promiscuous acronyms. That’s my motto.

Monday morning I headed out to Colorado with Taylor, Adam and Nina for a backpacking trip. Apparently, the plan was to hike El Diente, which means “The tooth” in Spanish, but let me tell you there were no teeth on that mountain.

The drive was about eight hours which is equal to about four Taylor Robbins stories, give or take. As it turns out, we all got a little too distracted with all the good conversation and the open calculus book we refer to as the life of Taylor Robbins (you’ll have to take my word on that one) and we took a wrong turn and ended up in Shiprock, New Mexico. We all decided to embrace the local flavor so we went out to eat at a traditional southwestern restaurant. It was one of those Mom and Pop type places. They called it Taco Bell, but they didn’t even serve tacos with the real kind of cheese. On the plus side, the detour gave us extra time to do things like make up raps about the city of Dunton.

We hiked into camp that evening, that is before we frolicked throught the fields near the entrance to the trailhead. This is our before picture:

It wasn’t ten minutes after arriving at the camp before I fell head first into the creek, camera and all. Oops. If anyone were to be the one to fall into the creek it would be me, for those that do not know my track record. Don’t worry, I had a shamwow that my mom told me to bring along. I was saying wow every time.

It was a beautiful first evening complete with a walk to the waterfall, roasting gummi bears, and meeting our new friend, Nick, who happened to drop by for a visit and gladly welcomed to join our group by our one, Taylor.

The next morning after a hearty breakfast and melting my shoes in the fire (oops again) we finally began our ascent up to the 14,000 foot summit. It was super steep and rocky, but absolutely beautiful. It was an awesome hike with an awesome group of people. Backpacking is always infinitely better when you are with people who enjoy it as much as you do.

It was a fairly difficult climb, at least for me. The last stretch of loose steep rocks we had to scale were easily the scariest thing a few of us had done. We felt very accomplished after summiting.

I guess that wall of rocks we had to scale were much more dangerous on the way down. Nina and I were basically crawling down the side of the mountain on our stomachs watching rocks down 500 feet with each step we took. About a quarter of the way down, the rock I was standing on broke loose from underneath me and I apparently flipped down the side of the cliff and the boulder then landed on top of my leg, resulting in this:

In the end, we had to cut the trip short to take me to the Emergency Room for stitches. This naturally led to Taylor’s rant in the waiting room about the new health care bill. Never a dull moment with Taylor. I truly do not know what I would have done without each member of our group helping me down the mountain and bandaging me at the bottom.

All in all, we can agree, the trip was a huge success and we all want to go back. There were so many highlights of the trip for me; I couldn’t begin to describe the experience. I only hope I can have many more others of equal or greater value. For now I suppose I am stuck at home with stitches deprived of tennis and showers-- two of my greatest joys in life. It was well worth it.

Keep it Real
Sara Nicole