Wedding Jitters

Okay, so…Justin and I are getting married in less than a month. No big deal. YES BIG DEAL! It totally snuck up on me! I have been so busy trying to finish making/sewing everything, get things shipped, nag people for their RSVP’s so I can get a final head count, make schedules, schedules and more schedules while keeping up with the second most busiest time at work, that I have forgotten…I”M GETTING MARRIED!!

I had to sign something with Sarah ———- the other day since it won’t be processed until July when my name will no longer be Sarah —–! HOLY COW!! Not only was my new name extremely sloppy but it didn’t really sink in until I wrote it. I will never be Sarah —– again! One becomes two; I will have a HUSBAND; I will be a WIFE; my name will go on OUR house; Justin will be wearing a ring that represents all of this for the world to see; we’re thinking about having kids; I would then be a MOM! Does all this mean I am an adult?? I certainly hope not! Yuck

Faaallllooff! Boy oh boy! I need to relax and think about all the lovely things I will be gaining. One becomes two; I will have a loving, understanding, supportive husband; I will be a wife to my best friend; my name will go on OUR house…yay; Justin will be wearing a ring telling the whole world that he fell in love with me and committed to spend the rest of his life with me through fun, difficult and adventurous times; we’re thinking about having kids; I would then be a mom hopefully half as good as my mom.

…a start to a new chapter in our lives. How exciting!

I love you Justin!

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Rock Climbing

So…I went rock climbing for the first time on REAL ROCKS!! You would think I would have warmed up to this idea before now due to my love of rocks in most other contexts.

Justin and I went on Memorial Day weekend to Tieton, WA to meet a friend and a big group of climbers. The camping was so strange in the national forest. There were just tons of people who found little nooks in the woods and decided to camp there. There were lots of designated camp grounds as well but also lots of random non-paying campers. It felt strange being in such a beautiful camping location without paying for it. The group’s campsite was right on a beautiful, but frigid river.

Justin and I were given a primitive map to help guide us to the group site but due to no cell coverage Justin and I were scrambling for any landmarks that would tell us where we were. As we felt we were getting to the correct spot we snooped in a campsite we though might be the climbing group’s site and hunted for clues. Climbing bumper sticker on one of the cars (which were mostly Subaru’s, which outdoorsy folk love), no-one at the site (which would be accurate with them climbing during the day) and the site looked like it was big enough to fit a big group of people. Done! It was settled, that was the site!

After taking a little snoozer in the pre-honey moon van we woke up to find that our detective work had payed off! We amazingly picked the right site. It was a great group of nice people. However, I couldn’t say the same for the people down the road. I guess I shouldn’t say they weren’t nice people. We didn’t stick around long enough to find out after seeing and hearing the group of drunkies shooting beer cans out of the trees with their riffles. Excellent! Super smart choice fellas! Lets keep that out of the gene pool, shall we?

I decided that I might try climbing the next day if nobody hassled me about it. There’s nothing worse than people building up your anxiety and then participating in an already strenuous and dangerous sport.

The next day I told myself I would enjoy myself on the rock and read my book and if I decided it was an appropriate time to climb and no one had been hassling me I would try it. The time was right, I was shaking like a leaf and I tried it! Holy Cow it was scary!! The rock was really crumbly which made me nervous and the wind was blowing like crazy. Earlier that day Justin was climbing, reached for a hold and the rock fell off the side of the cliff. Great!! Super sturdy! We were all on belay though so as long as all safety gear was put on correctly we would be caught by the rope if we fell.

I had barely started up the climb and my silly heart was pounding out of my chest. The rock we were climbing was on top of another cliff therefore it felt high and scary before I even started the climb. At one point I couldn’t go any farther because my arms felt like burning jello. “Let go of the rock and hang there so you can rest,” they shouted at me. Easier said then done. Whenever my hands/weight started leaving the rock the wind would blow me away from my climb to other parts of the cliff. I was clinging to the rock with, what seemed like, dear life. I decided to continue up, got tired pretty quickly and came down. If my brain wasn’t in panic mode I would have realized I could have held onto the lead rope attached to the belay to hold me in place while I rested. But by that time in the climb my brain and body was completely panicked. I am proud of myself for getting up there and I will definitely try it again…but wasn’t about to later that trip. My heart can only take so much.

Justin did really well. He even started climbing a 5.10. To give you perspective I was climbing a 5.8. Justin always looks so nice up there too because of the great reaches he can do with his long limbs.

I’m just realizing I wrote this post in a very calm tone. I guess it would have sounded different if I had written this right after coming back from the trip. I guess that’s a game our minds play on us (and women who have had children– “it wasn’t that bad.” We say that until we do it again!)

Oh yeah…I almost forgot. Justin and I and another couple went on a hike while the other climbers finished climbing for the day. The hike was beautiful but we found bear and elk tracks and some sort of giant poo!!! Super scary! I was glad when we got off that trail. It was meant to be a 4-wheeling trail with tons of mud pits.

Another cool thing about this trip was it was Justin’s birthday while camping! He was able to have a yummy camping breakfast on a rock next to the beautiful river, get serenaded by the climbing group singing happy birthday and make a candle birthday wish on one of the group member’s emergency candles.

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Ape Caves

A couple weekends ago Justin and I decided we should take the honeymoon van out for yet another dry run.  We headed up north into WA to explore a cave that many have told us about.  Since we planned on arriving there after dark and figured we wouldn’t have cell coverage we were relying on topo trail maps for guidance.  The plan was to find a campground/parking lot close the the Ape Cave entrance to sleep in for the night and then wake up bright and early Saturday morning to go exploring.  Well, it didn’t go quite like that.

The roads within the park were very sparse and the signage wasn’t the best…the fact that it was dark didn’t help either.  However, we figured it didn’t really matter where we slept since we had almost all we needed in the van (except for a potty…although we did just get one of those — yes, there are big girl potty chairs too).  We were absolutely exhausted and had been driving for hours so Justin found a trail head that had promising bathrooms for the morning.  Phew, we thought…what a nice place to finally get some rest.

Justin and I had almost finished getting ready for bed and closing up the van for the night when…sssccrrrapppee…ssccrappee…sssccraapee!  My first thought was, “what the heck was that noise!!??”  ”Did you hear that?” I said to Justin.  ”Yeah, it’s probably just little critters or the wind” he says.   A couple seconds go by…sssccrapeee…”Did you HEAR THAT??” I said…”it was that noise again.”  ”Hmmm…” Justin says, “I’ll go check it out.”

“What?!  Are you crazy?!  What if it’s a bob cat or a bear??”

“Sarah, just let me check it out.”

With MUCH protest from me I arm him with our hatchet and Justin steps outside with headlamp on to check it out…while the door was open mind you which scared the life out of me!  Nothing…no sound!  He was out there for what seemed like forever but in actuality probably 3-4 minutes looking around, stopping to listen, then looking around some more.

Justin comes back in to the van, disregarding the danger that I was sure we were in.  ”This is just like the movies!  We’re going to be that stupid couple wandering off in the woods in the middle of the night that gets attacked by a wild animal!!” I told Justin.  We started to finish getting ready for bed and all of a sudden within a minute of Justin closing his door…Ssssccrraappeee.

“That is NOT an animal!!!  What the heck is that!!??”

Again with even more protest and anger I try to keep Justin in the van.  Nope, wasn’t going to listen.  Out Justin goes to explore again. No sound!  Justin comes in again at which time I realize I’ve been holding my breath and gasp for air.  Closes the door and not a minute later…ssscccrrrapppee!!

That was it!  By that time Justin was freaked out too which made me even more freaked out!!  Now I was sure it was a crazy ax murderer who was obviously dragging his last dead victim across the parking lot!  We both decided to book it out of there as fast as possible.  We ended up finding a parking lot in front of a visitor’s center we found with a somewhat reassuring Sheriff’s boat parked on a trailer not far from the parking lot.  I did not get a wink of sleep that night.

In the morning we woke up…waited over an hour for the visiter’s center to open to use the bathroom until realizing it was closed down and no more safe than the ax murderer parking lot down the street.

…waiting and waiting.  

Off to the caves.  Finally signs of LIFE…other people who weren’t dragging dead bodies!  Yay!

It was a lovely warm morning when we started out in the cave.  We decided to start at the lower entrance of the cave and work our way up.  These Ape Caves were named by the hiking group that discovered the cave, not due to hundreds of apes living in the cave which was what I was imagining.  The caves were formed by the boiling hot lava that spewed from Mt St Helens thousands of years ago.  The lava melted the existing rock then slowly drained out as it cooled and moved to lower valleys.  Once we gave our eyes time to adjust to our headlamp light it was an amazing sight.  Millions of little crevices, heaves and smooth surfaces were made by the lava.  On the way in a guy gave us his glow sticks to loop on our shoes which actually really helped to get a better idea of your footing on the sharp loose rocks that I’m going to pretend didn’t fall from the ceiling wall of the cave.  Justin and I climbed rock pile after rock pile making our way up to the top.  We ran into 2 underground ponds (can I call them ponds?…idk) in the cave which took some finagling to get around.  The darkness certainly was playing tricks on our eyes.  The water was very hard to see until one of us stepped in it.

It was so neat…when the cave was pinched down to only an arms length wide the wind in the cave was super strong.  It felt as if we were standing on the front of a moving boat  – crazy!  Most of the time the path was very clear but at one point Justin and I were following one wall and realized we hit a dead end where the ground we had been climbing up and the ceiling met.  Eek!  We back-tracked a bit and found the real path.  That certainly got my heart pumping a bit!

At one point Justin and I heard other people coming toward us so we turned off our lights, covered our glow sticks and as they got closer started making noises to creep them out — totally Justin’s idea I promise.  Does turning off all lights in the middle of a deep dark lava cave sound like me??  I think we startled them but not too awful bad.

Toward the end we got to a place where there was a hole in the ceiling of the cave letting light in which was an amazing sight to see.  The cave is a consistent 42* so when we exited the cave we were immediately pealing off our layers to adapt to the 75* above ground temperature.  Justin and I had a lovely picnic  after coming out of the cave and headed home for our next adventure.

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