It has already happened, today I forgot what day of the week it was. The last two days have been a whirlwind. On Sunday (yesterday, which also seems like 5 days ago), the students departed NCSU for the airport with Karl and Chester while I set out to Walmart, Costco and Target to do our shopping. I HIGHLY recommend if you ever find yourself needing to shop by yourself for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 15 people (12 of whom you’ve just met) for 2 weeks with minimal cooking supplies, do NOT go to Costco to shop for said food on a Sunday at 11am. I wish I had taken a picture of the pallet cart that was so full I had a very difficult time maneuvering through the crowds of families and long isles. I would consider the trip successful though, as all of the students were excited about the food I ended up buying.
Once I had everything shoved into the trunk of the car, I headed for the airport to meet the crew. We usually rent 15 passenger vans for our field trips and remove the back seat in order to have enough space for students and luggage, but due to a combination of pricing, availability and limitations with our university rental contracts, we reserved SUVs this year, which would also give us higher vehicle clearances, beneficial for dirt roads. What seemed like a great idea at the time turned out to be more difficult in practice given that the rental company didn’t have enough available vehicles that had a bench row (as a opposed to bucket seats) as the second row for everyone to have a seat, with enough trunk space to accommodate the amount of luggage and food we had.
The students were troopers while we figured everything out and eventually, after waiting for an hour or two, we had 3 vehicles with enough space and we hit the road. Given the delay, we decided to grab dinner at Panera on the way instead of setting up camp and cooking in the dark. We needed to reorganize the food van, so after setting up camp we played a life-sized game of Tetris to fit the food back into the trunk of the car in a practical way that made it easily accessible at meal times.
This morning was the first time making breakfast and lunch in the field and everything went smoothly! Since most of us weren’t adjusted to the time change yet, there was a group of us up around 6 AM and a second wave around 7. There have been lots of firsts on this trip and breakfast/lunch making was no exception. Chester even showed Campbell how to make field pour-over coffee that will take the paint off a car.
We took a bus to the Alberta Falls trailhead and were there by 9:30am. We began our ascent around 9:45 and made it to the furthest point and lunch destination, Sky Pond, about 4 hours later with a few geology lesson stops along the way. The students were given a topographic map of the area and asked to identify glacial landforms they observed along the way, carved and deposited by the glacier that existed in the valley we were hiking up about 15,000 years ago. The hike was about 10 miles round trip and trekked through some pretty rugged terrain including scaling Timberline Falls. The 360 views at Sky Pond are not the kind that I can describe in words, even the pictures don’t do it justice. Even better were the students reactions to the screen saver-like landscape we were experiencing in person. To top of the amazing views we even witnessed the marriage proposal of a couple who we had seen hiking with us up to the top!
Feeling accomplished and exhausted, we headed down the valley as a group. An uncle of one of our students who happens to be a retired geology professor, invited us over to his beautiful home in Estes Park for dinner, a 20 minute drive from our campground. He offered a delicious meal of meatballs, hotdogs, beans and assortment of chips and dips for all 15 of us! His house was incredibly beautiful, spattered with geology everywhere that he made or installed himself. Not only did he provide a great meal that we didn’t have to cook after a long day of hiking, but also some engaging geology conversation. After discussions about some dinosaur bones he had on display in his home, we said our thank yous and headed back to camp around 8pm. Lots of us were burned out from the long hiking day so some people headed to bed right away. Karl and I had some work to do, so we headed down the road a few miles to the Visitors Center where we could get enough service, and here I am. Sorry I didn’t call, mom and dad, but I didn’t want to wake you since it’s after midnight there, but I’m safe! Fading quickly, I’m going to sign off for now.
