Birthdays

Tim's birthday is May 5th and my birthday is May 16th, thats 11 days apart. Kind of fun! It makes the event seem even bigger and makes celebrating a great time.

As some of you know, we had a joint BBQ birthday party at my parents house. My parents, Cara, G&G Hoyt, Tim's parents and his grandma Eileen & a few of our good friends. We had a great time hanging out, eating and chatting.

~ For Tim's birthday, the two of us went to Lassen Natl. Park to go snow camping. We left Friday evening and camped on a snow bank at the visitor center parking lot. The next morning we got together our backpacking packs and started our hike up the road, up the mountain. We were fortunate to have a couple miles of paved road, but had our snowshoes clipped to our bags for when the snow started.

We had a lovely "sack" lunch picnic that we ate sitting in the middle of the road. Warm and sunny, sheltered from wind and not a worry of cars because the road is closed. After lunch we continued our hike through the snow up the rest of the mountain.

All the lakes up there are completely frozen over and snow covered. Its so pretty! To those don't know there are lakes, would probably walk right over them continuing to not know. We came to our destination between the two lakes at the Bumpass Hell parking area. Because of being nearly at the highest point of the park road, most of land is very exposed, minimal tree coverage. The wind was especially bad and so we had to find a good shelter.

A large cluster of trees found to be just what we needed, we set up our tent. Still the wind was a real issue, so we didn't really get to explore as we had planned before and hung out in the tent the rest of the afternoon. Got out to make some dinner, but that was an awful time and ended up eating our "hot" meal as less then lukewarm. And went to sleep super early, putting hand warmers in our socks to keep our toes warm.

Sunday morning we woke up to calm winds and lovely sunshine. Much warmer! Had odds-and-ends for breakfast because oat meal was no longer worth it. Packed back up and had a wonderful walk back down. Seriously, the walk was quite lovely! Beautiful surroundings and wonderful weather.

We did it! Snowshoe backpacking.

~ My birthday tomorrow. I am going to be 25!!! Last day of class before finals. I am probably going to have myself some breakfast outside, sitting in the lovely adirondack chairs Sandy gave us for my birthday. Not sure what I will do with my afternoon. Then Tim and I will go to a lovely restaurant in down town Chico called Broadway Heights.

Good times :)