Directionally Challenged.

When I was a little girl, my father forced me into hiking. I loathed it as a child and young teen. In fact, my father still references that it was more “death march-y” than hiking. However, in my past few years of adulthood I’ve really come to love it.

I don’t know if it’s the combined exercise endorphins and dopamine release along with the smell of mountain air and the sound of nothing…or if it’s just that I never really hated it at all, but had to keep up some dramatic excuse to be a lazy youngin’. Regardless, I now long for those cold nights in a sleeping bag followed by a challenging hike to some far away mountainous place.

C., N., and I jumped at weekend opportunity for two nights of camping, hot springs, and white water rafting. While I discovered and explored on many new aspects of myself during this weekend, some tended to shine “brighter” than others.

First, I discovered (or….admitted) to being directionally challenged. And whether she’ll divulge it or not, C. definitely does NOT help this disorder.

Me: “Okay, so what’s the road we’re looking for?”

C. “Highway 494”.

20 minutes later

Me: “Wait, what highway? 297?”

C. “I think it’s 427. Yeah! 427.”

N. frustrated

All in all, we mostly found where we were going.

It turns out wildfires had wiped out most of our hot spring destinations. But, a quiet, cool night in the mountain air, accompanied by a diamond sky (seriously….I forgot what it really looks like) definitely trumped out hot-springs let down.

After N. set C. and I directionally straight, we found “Molly’s Hot Spring”, which was a short walk across an abandoned bridge and scaling up the side of the mountain…in the middle of a burnt forest. It was charming, cute…and we were pretty happy we found something.

Lesson Two: Cooking eggs in the forest? No problem! We successfully steamed eggs in a bag!!! Not everyone knows this trick, so I’ll share with everyone compliments to my big brother Ry!

All you’ll need is:

-Something to boil hot water in (even a small propane camp stove will work.)

-Freezer zip-lock bags

-Eggs, Cheese, Ham, Peppers, Onions (or really, whatever you want.)

Put the eggs and your sides into the ziplock bag and seal out all the air. Put in the pot of boiling water, take it out every few minutes to let out the steam and squish the eggs around with your hands. After about eight minutes of doing this, you should have perfect steamed eggs. A great protein to start off any mountain adventure!!!

Lesson 3: Patience doesn't come easily to me....especially when blood sucking creatures are involved. Okay, growing up in Wyoming I am pretty used to those pesky little creatures. Granted we get them less in Idaho, I still feel as though I’m a pretty tough cookie when it comes to things like this. But this camp…..was terrible. We were literally slapping every place on my body, murdering tens at a time. If only murdering that many would have made the slightest difference.

Bug spray, smoke, moving around…NOTHING was working.

The solution? Throw your tent (sleeping bags and all) into the car and get the hell out.

Just a few short miles up the road, I found the spot we were originally looking for (remember that whole ‘directionally challenged’ thing?....) and it had 1/100^th of the mosquitos from Death-Camp.

 Us making freezer bag steamed eggs with my Primus campstove! 

 A meadow in Payette National Forest

N. and C. at Molly's hot springs!

All in all, a weekend sleeping on the hard ground and eating zip-locked eggs was pretty awesome. Topped off with a white water excursion down the Cobarton River with a few extended “framily” members.

It’s the stories like this I’ll want to remember forever.