The feeling that several hundred miles and an extra 9,000+ feet of elevation can instill is something that is hard to describe to people who've never experienced the mountains. It's one thing to see pictures or videos. It's another to drive through the mountains. It's something spiritual to pitch a tent in a place that is void of any artificial light (not a radio/cell tower or house in sight), highway sounds, or generators from some Texan's 28' Fleetwood Mallard (IF YOU WANT TO SLEEP IN A BED AND WATCH TV GET A HOTEL ROOM LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!).
The picture below was taken as we first entered Union Park. It's about 9 miles from the main road to our camp and the terrain makes the drive last about an hour.
Union Park is the kind of place that allows a person to shed the weight of paying bills and looking for the cheapest gas in town, if only for a little while. The next picture was taken looking to the east northeast from the edge of our camp. The field in the foreground is carved up by small streams and beaver ponds. There is far more water here than the picture shows and contains the best trout fishing I've ever experienced. You don't catch a lot of large fish, but you catch a lot of fish.
A few of us decided to take a hike to a lake about 2 miles away and a thousand feet above out camp. None of us had been there before so it took a bit of navigating to get there. About a mile and a half from camp we stumbled upon the remnants of an old log cabin near a small stream.
The lake sits at a little over 11,000 feet above sea level. There were a couple of campsites that showed sign of recent use. A raft sat on the dirt under a foot of water. Until I saw this lake, it was hard for me to imagine a place more secluded than our campsite. The next time I come to Union Park I plan on camping here at least for a night (even though the night before we broke camp a myself and a couple others heard a Mountain Lion screaming nearby).
So, here I am. A short week of classes ahead of me and I'm trying to figure out what the Clint Eastwood speech was about (this took place on the way to the woods and I have yet to view the video), and looking forward to football season. Every team could stink and the season would still be more entertaining than the coming election...it's late...I'll save that noise for next time.
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