The Hunt

It feels so awesome to have it be Tuesday and my work week is done! I'm always relieved that I've reserved a few vacation days for the holidays, and that I've always had a job where I CAN do that, too.

Our elk hunting on Sunday was so fun. Neither Daniel or I filled our tags, but we had a great day anyway. My brother Dan, his wife, Audria, 2 other guys I don't know, as well as my mom and dad all went hunting together. We were in a beautiful area and I just really enjoyed the day. We walked so much...up hill, down hill, on slants, in snow...uffda. It was tough work. I feel like I got one of the best workouts ever. Unfortunately I only saw 3 cows and they were running away from me.

At one point I was walking with my dad and he told me to stay put and he was going to go ahead about 50-100 yards. I was okay with it...for about 3 minutes. I got spooked. Have you seen the movie "The Happening"? I don't want to ruin the movie, but I'll just say, everytime the wind blew, I held my breath. If you've seen that movie, you'll understand what I'm saying. That's not what really freaked me out though. Earlier in the day my mom and dad saw a bull elk right in front of them. (We only have cow tags, so we can't shoot bulls) I didn't know how I'd respond if I saw a frickin' bull elk standing in front of me! I was scared to be alone and that's all there is to it. So, after 3 minutes of standing alone, I started meandering closer to my dad. Dan and Audria were about 150-200 yards below us on the mountain and I heard Audria yell that she's just gotten one. I got nervous. I got back into my dad's line of sight and felt better. Pretty soon he started walking away from me again. This time I decided I'd be brave. I watched my dad start to disappear around a bend. He stayed out of my sight for a solid 15-20 minutes. Then, he appeared again. He was moving kind of slow. When he got up to me he started to tell that he saw elk and started running towards them. He got 3 steps into his run and he fell. He thought he'd broken something, but he was able to get up and we walked very slowly back to camp. I was worried about him. He's not nearly as nimble as he was before his 2 back surgeries. However I did laugh at him, too. (After I knew he was going to be okay) As we were walking back he said, "I just don't know why I thought I could run after them!" He looked like a deflated kid. I couldn't help but laugh. He's doing fine today. We were all a little sore on Monday morning, but we're all feeling good now.

We are hunting again on Friday and we're really hoping to fill our tags then. I can't wait to get back up there. If I think of it, I'll try to take a few pictures to post.

Daniel's parents and little brother will be here tomorrow night for the holiday weekend. We haven't seen Sam since July and we just briefly saw Larry and Carol about a month ago, so we're very anxious to have them here for 4.5 days. I'm serving Thanksgiving dinner sometime between 2-3pm. (Does anyone else have trouble getting all the food ready at the same time?) There will be 11 of us including Dan and his family, my mom and dad and Daniel's brother and parents. I'm looking forward to it! Thursday will have to be an early night though, since we'll be up again by about 3:30am to go hunting. We probably won't get home until 8pm. I'm hoping to sleep in on Saturday. We're pretty much ready for everything though. Tomorrow I'll give the bathrooms one last clean-up and vacuum the whole house and we should be set. I am just so happy to not be working :)

Hopefully I'll have a good update after the weekend!