People Get Lost in the Mountains....

Three weeks ago I went to Idaho to spend the weekend with my BFF, Jaymee. This summer turned out to be pretty crazy for both of us...I moved and got a new job, she worked insanely long hours in the potato harvest...and we hadn't seen each other for months. Needless to say we were more than excited to spend a weekend together just laughing and having fun.

When I arrived in Idaho Friday night we went to dinner at Rupe's. After Rupe's we headed up to her familie's cabin in the mountains. We had decided to spend the night at the cabin Friday night and go 4 wheeling on Saturday. We woke up Saturday morning and headed out on the 4 wheeler. We were on an adventure to a part of the mountain we had never explored before. In that area (now when I say "area" I'm talking about a 40 mile radius-ish) there is an old ski resort. In all of the years Jaymee and I have been BFF we've always wanted to find the ski hill and go exploring there. We had never been able to find it but this day Jaymee was pretty sure she knew how to get to it so we went to a new part of the mountain.

When we found the road that Jaymee thought was it (turns out she was sort of right) there were people at the gate (right next to the "no trespassing" signs) so we rode back up to the top of the hill to wait for them to leave and eat our breakfast....Mountain Dew and powdered donuts!




While we were eating breakfast I had to pee, real bad. We were on this road in the middle of nowhere but for the middle of nowhere this road was a somewhat major thoroughfare, with NO bushes or trees. So I couldn't very well just pop a squat right out in the middle of everything because chances were somewhat high that a car might drive by, but this tall grass was all that I could find to squat behind. Jaymee kept tormenting me and yes, even taking pictures while I tried to do my business.

While we were waiting at the top of the hill we saw the cars leaving from the gate where we needed to go. So we went back and followed the turn. The road turned to a dirt lane, which turned into a 4 wheeler path through a bean field, which turned into a 4 wheeler path through the this forest, which eventually turned into a cow path. Let me tell any of you who are wondering...a cow is not nearly as wide as a 4 wheeler. So we turned around and took yet another very narrow 4 wheeler path in the other direction. Remember, we don't have a clue where we are.

Well, just as the second path we were on ended I saw a green lush meadow that led to a main (as main as you can get in the middle of the mountains) road! Saweet. So I backed up and headed down the hill, began through the meadow when I noticed that the meadow wasn't such at all....it was a swamp, there was standing water and COW DUNG EVERYWHERE!!!!!! When I let off of the gas Jaymee said, "DO NOT SLOW DOWN! We'll get stuck, just gun it...." Well, I "gunned" it but we still got stuck (and smack in the middle of this giant cow pie puddle)!
With just the two of us there was not enough man power to get it out of the 10 inches of brown oooze that the 4 wheeler had sunk into. We looked around...there weren't a lot of tools to help us out either. Remember that road that I said I had seen, we were just 50 yards off of the road. The only idea I came up with...and I came up with it as I stood on a log while Jaymee was wading around and sinking knee-deep in poop...was to try and gather sticks to put under the tires to use as traction. After we gathered all of the sticks we could find it did not work.
So Jaymee called her mom the let her know that we were stuck but we truly had no idea where in the world we were so we couldn't even tell her where to come and look for us to help us. That was a very helpless and somewhat scary feeling. Our only option: we started walking......and we kept walking..........

and walking........


Finally, after:

3.5 Miles
Peeing behind two bushes
Talking to 2 Mexicans in 1 hoopdie truck
Passing 2 4-wheelers
Finding one heart shaped rock
Laughing until my belly hurt
Finding one old oven
and Watching one interesting man meditate on top of a rock

We came to a road sign so we could tell Jaymee's mom and her brother Corey where to find us. We sat there for about 30 minutes but eventually they were able to find us. We went back to the 4 wheeler and here is the crux of the whole thing.....

50 yards from where we were stuck on that "main" road was the old ski resort we had been looking for!