Coast to Coast

Hey y'all! I'm actually back in North Carolina :(  Holy moly is it a hot one (well, in comparison to what I'm used to!!) I got back a few days ago from my trip with Aaron. After a flight, 2000 miles, a left turn, another 600 miles, and a right turn we ended up in Seattle to move Aaron into his place for the summer. Then another flight backtracked me to my starting place at good old RDU.

I got to spend two days with the family before Aaron picked me up for our trip. A little brother/sister time, a haircut from the Auntie, breakfast with the grandparents, getting pampered by the other grandparents, and of course time with my Annie <3 That little pup never left my side. Even sleeping, we managed to both fit on the couch (a little squished with an 80 pound lap dog). So in a nutshell, it was a flurry of "Megan is home! We need to see her and ask her a thousand questions about climbing!" and some tail wags.

Look at this cutie pie.

Aaron picked me up, met the family, and then we headed to Byron, MN to spend the night with his family. By the way, his mom makes the best cookies and muffins so we had plenty to snack on during our long days of driving. Then it was hitting I-90 for 10 hours to get to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Damn is South Dakota boring to drive through. Set the cruise at 84 and let's go. We camped for the night, had a nice fire, and had a few beers. Next morning we headed to the Tower. Luckily (and somehow miraculously) we were the first people to get to Durrance. We geared and racked up and went for it. Five pitches, a few hundred feet, a busted knuckle or two, scratched shins, screaming toes, and a bonk to the noggin we reached the top. I felt like I could see all of Wyoming! I also made a fool out of myself by talking about the "zen stones." Little did I know they were actually called "cairns" and they are actually directional markers. That is one way to impress your man. Then we rappelled down and hit the road again.

Durrance is on the left

yeah, i climbed that.

 Next day we finished the drive to Grand Teton National Park. We rented crampons and an ice axe for me - I'm a professional at mountaineering now (bahaha). We set up camp, hid our food from the wildlife, and went bouldering. It started raining so we went back and put on rain gear and took a little walk around Jenny Lake. We had an early night since we were getting up early to ascend the Middle Teton. The next morning he made breakfast and lunch as I disassembled the tent (teamwork at it's best). We shoved everything back into his car - which is rather impressive may I say - and headed for the trail. 

Let me pause and give a little disclaimer: The year before when Aaron and his friend did the exact same thing, they didn't hit snow until they were 4 miles into the 7.5 mile ascent. This year we hit snow right from the parking lot. Oh, and Aaron is Mr. Nature Man with the appropriate gear and I am Miss Trying-To-Keep-Up-To-Aaron-On-A-Mountain with inappropriate gear. And guess what, I would do it again (once I have the right stuff).

Middle Teton

Pretty pretty.

 So we hit snow right off the parking lot. But it wasn't even, flat snow; it was snow here and there, some melted, some icy. There was a lot postholes happening. Posthole is a word I quickly learned the meaning of when my foot randomly sunk through the snow. If there is one way I could travel the world, it would be by postholes (many other would agree). We got going for awhile, took a little break to take off layers and fuel up. After some slipping and sliding on my end, Aaron gave me my ice axe and a walking pole to me upright. Soon after it was crampon time for me. In Aaron's words they were supposed to make me feel like a spider. I felt like I was supposed to be in Monster's Inc with my claw feet. Anyways, we kept going for awhile, taking small breaks until we made it to Garnet Canyon. We decided that the rate we were going at wasn't going to be quick enough to make it to the summit by our turn around time (mainly because I was basically I clumsy small child that was slower than molasses in January). You would think going down is easier than going up right? Maybe if I was a polar bear sure. I learned many things that day
:
1- I still don't really enjoy snow.
2- I'm a wuss when it comes to the cold.
3- I don't have the right mountaineering equipment (especially the boots).
4- Crampons do make you feel like a spider.
5- I am very terrible at glacading.
6- I require more water than a normal human being
7- Aaron thinks it's hilarious watching me glacade (and probably got bored waiting for me).
8- I want to do it again (after better preparation of course).

If I was smarter, I would have taken my own picture of the Teton Range. But I didn't.

Chinese food after that was delicious. We ate in Jackson (Mom, this is where we went for our family vacation whatever year that was). We started our drive towards Castle Rocks in Idaho. Unfortunately, we didn't go climbing there :(  We were running short on time to get to Portland (we could have gotten to Portland a day later and gone climbing but we didn't). 

Anyways, I'll leave it at this for now. I'll tell y'all about the second half of our trip a little later :) let's just say I would do anything to be back there right now again. 

So this is a cairn. Looks like zen stones to me!