Two of my favorite pictures from this summer!

I love hiking. I love it so much that I have logged about 90 miles of trail hiking this spring and summer. My friend Bryant did a nice job documenting one of these trips on his blog. I may comment on it later...

I love my wife! One of the reasons that I love her is because she likes the outdoors just like I do (though I don't think as much). This summer we had an awesome opportunity to go on a back country hiking trip with some Young Life kids to Colorado.

Any other time in our married life, I don't think anyone would have blinked at us going on this hike. However, if you noticed in the above picture and previous posts, Lindsay is quite pregnant (just starting 5 months in the picture). I recieved quite a bit of flak from people when I announced that my wife was going to go on a "wilderness trip", but Lindsay barely hesitated and really saw it as a chance to hang out with some high school girls for an awesome week of back country hiking and God's beauty!

I knew at once that Lindsay was going to be able to complete this trip, mainly because it was in her Idahoian blood. Not commonly known or acknowledged, Sacagawea was also native to what is now Idaho, and she carried a baby across North Dakota, through the Rockies and onward to the Pacific Ocean and back with Lewis and Clark! So with that in mind, and the consent of our doctors, we embarked on this incredible journey.

In short, the hiking trip was REALLY challenging. In all we covered 41 miles in four and a half days. Our main elevations ranged from 9,000 feet to 12,000 feet, and our longest day was a bruising 6:30 am to 10:30 pm (16 hours) hike that left us exhausted--but healthy.

With a steady supply of Snickers and Cliff Bars, and plenty of prayer from tons of people, Lindsay did great! I was so proud of her the whole time--and I love the fact that we can tell our little girl that Lindsay carried her up to beautiful Goose Lake (pictured above). I would love to even take the little one back there (the much shorter route to the lake) someday. What a tough mommy!