Granite Chief Wilderness

Over a month ago Brady and I decided it was finally time to go on a backpacking adventure. So we headed off with our packs on a relatively short (8mile) journey into the Granite Chief Wilderness.

Before we started I made a decision to sever all ties to the real world and leave my beloved ipod in the car. This way I could listen to nature and my thoughts instead of drowning them out with music. But by the second mile I realized that walking is boring and I really missed my ipod. So for entertainment along the trail we searched for the best walking sticks we could find. Needless to say we found some pretty awesome ones.

Brady led me to believe that he had been here before and knew where we were going. Apparently he hadn't ever been this far into the wilderness and so we accidentally climbed this peak for no reason. After 8 miles of a more strenuous hike than I had anticipated I was having trouble moving my legs up this stupid mountain. Brady was kind enough to offer to take my pack, and I was too tired to let my pride get in the way.

Once we got down to the bottom we set up camp for the night.

After eating dinner and drinking some delicious mountain water I was feeling much refreshed. Camping was a lot of work but it was definitely worth it.

Life Lately

We've been home from Chicago for over two months now. The drive home went great, we drove 30 hours straight through again, though we did try to stop once. It was almost 2 a.m. and we were in North Platte, Nebraska looking for a motel. Surprisingly the cheapest we could find was $70 so we took it, but upon opening the door to our room we were assaulted with the smell of a moldy old retirement home. I also soon discovered that there were quite a few too many insect corpses lining the perimeter of the room. Since we couldn't bring ourselves to touch anything in the room we got our money back and scrapped the whole 'sleeping' plan.

Once we passed Reno and entered California we were giddy to finally be home and see those beautiful Sierra mountains.

We had to get off the freeway and suck in a little mountain air.

My parents were leaving soon for a whirlwind Europe tour with all the original Wheeler siblings and Grandpa Les so Brady and I stayed with them while I searched for an apartment.

Brady's dad Jay took us to the State Fair soon after we got back, which was a lot of fun.

They had several kiddy rides from Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. I was torn between being creeped out and intrigued.

This stunt show was my favorite part.

Finally we were able to move into our new place, Sunset Summit. After having been uprooted for a year and a half, we plan to be here for a while.

Its great, at last I get to live on the first floor, after 6 years and 7 different apartments with stairs. The distance from my car to my front door is about 8 steps total. I love it!

And I finally have a nice sunny patio where I can grow my own legal herbs. The basil has kind of taken over though.

One of Brady's dreams has recently come true as well, since he found a ridiculously cheap surround sound system on Craigslist. For the past 3 days or so he has been obsessively tinkering with wires and gizmos to get it all working right. Lucky for me he's really smart at fixing this sort of thing.

To test out its capabilities we needed a loud action movie which is when I discovered, to my horror, that the only one we own is 007 Die Another Day. I hope to remedy this soon by eliminating that debacle from our collection and adding to it, Iron Man or some other acceptable comic book movie. I'm open to suggestions.