Another outdoor trip successfully completed by the B2B residents. This weekend had a little different feel than past trips. We were separated into two groups: one hiking the Grand Canyon and the other hiking around Mesa Verde in Colorado. Our group was lucky enough to hike around Mesa Verde and see all of what this National Park has to offer.
We departed Hunter House around 815am and had a 5 hour car ride with our trusty guides navigating in the front seats. The sounds of heavy metal and smooth jazz filled the van from start to finish. We arrived at our campsite around 230pm. We quickly unpacked and set up camp because we had a long but beautiful hike ahead of us. It was an 8 mile hike up a canyon wall to multiple viewpoints. Our trained guide led us all the way to the top and tested our skills by purposely leading us off trail for a short time. We quickly found the trail again and began our descent. We made it back to camp in exactly 3.5 hours – right on schedule, according to our guide.
Since we were base camping, we whipped up a delicious 5 star Chicken Alfredo with a side of broccoli. We used this to fill us for the long day ahead. We started the next morning with a homemade eggs and grits breakfast to get us ready for the 4 hikes we had planned. Our first hike was a tour through the Mesa Verde Pueblos where the Natives lived nearly 1,000 years ago. The only way to get in and out of this ruin was through a small tunnel. Shortly after the tour, we went on a few mile hike along a ridge on which we saw petroglyphs whose meanings were left to our imagination. There were multiple ruins around the Mesa area that we could see along this hike.
After the hike we visited the museum to learn a little more about the people that had lived here and how they survived. After a quick lunch we took a short hike to a look out to see another ruin. While here, we held a very relevant Sharing is Caring meeting.
Everyone was beat up and exhausted but everyone was determined to hike up a mountainside to end the day with a beautiful sunset. People were breathing hard but all that went away when the residents got their breath taken away by the view. We all shared this magical and romantic moment for as long as we could. We then hiked down in the dark to end the perfect day. A cool night’s sleep followed by all you can eat pancake breakfast the next morning was the icing on the cake. Then a 5 hour metal and jazz filled van ride back to Hunter to end another successful trip.
