camping trip

We went camping over the last four days and had a great time. It was good to get out of the hot city, into the cooler temps at higher elevations. The hike up to our campsite took about 2 hours and we are proud to report that Ella kept up the whole way, even though it wasn't so easy. This photo, which shows Jen, Ella, and one of our camping companions walking up the valley to our site surrounded by shepherds, is only really significant because it is the last one that our camera took before it died. The on/off button has apparently just been pushed too many times, and has ceased to work. The rest of our pictures we took by putting our SD card in our friend's camera...

A shot of our campsite (our tent in the foreground, and the common area behind)...

It was Ella's first time in a tent that she can remember, and she thought it was great. She giggled as she went to bed every night in our borrowed camo tent...

Us at the breakfast table in the morning...

The view into the valley from the breakfast table...

On the third day, I went off with my camping buddy to scale the mountain behind our site. It took about 5 hours to go up the 4000 feet from the site and here I am at the top...

From the top, I could even see over the mountain pass to the south toward the really big mountains that I had just trekked through with my brother. You may not be able to see it without enlarging the picture, but the biggest mountain (in the center of the right half of the photo) is Chimtarga, the tallest peak in the Fans and the rock that Brent and I spent about 3 days walking around...

The real fun on this hike was on the way down. As it was beginning to get late and we were pretty wasted from hike, we looked across the valley from our ridge toward our campsite on the other side...

The only problem was what we saw as we looked below us...

We found ourselves on a ridge that terminated as a cliff on three sides. We knew that if we tried to go back the way we came (over the mountain) we were headed for trouble, as it was getting late. So we tried to find a way down the cliff. After looking at a few dead end options, we found a hole in the rock and went exploring...

We were very grateful for our cave, as it allowed us a safer way down the cliff, from the inside of the mountain...

This is a shot the next morning from the camp of the rock that we almost got stuck on...