happy 8th to us

I've been meaning to make a blog post about me and Terry's story to commemorate our eight year anniversary. I haven't got to it yet so I'll just do a post of what we did for our anniversary, which technically took place on June 19th, while Terry was on the Middle School bike trip.

So, a week later, we got our stuff together and made big plans. In the past, we've always just done a dinner and maybe a movie. But since we had so many outdoor options available, we decided to go play in the hills. That, and Terry wanted to show me part of the trail they biked the week before.

So my folks watched our kiddies for a day and we drove up to Hill City. We biked up the Mick from trail marker 61 to 73 and went through two tunnels and then turned around and came back. Here we are, happy to have made it halfway through to the two tunnels.

And here we were hardening our wills to turn around and go uphill.

Once we got back up the hill we stopped for some more water at the Redfern marker and then it was downhill happiness from then on. We did about 25 miles and my butt hurt! I had never biked that far before. On Terry's trip, he did more than 30 miles every day and tent camped so I pretty much think he (and the other middle schoolers and leaders) are awesome.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast that night (Coyote Blues Village B & B) and it was great! They even upgraded us to the nicest room. We ate dinner across the highway at another bed and breakfast's bistro and then went to back to Hill City for some ice cream and a walk. We also bought some fudge and I had to suppress a giggle when the owner told us that we should come back and buy more fudge in the morning to help us on our hike because it was good energy fuel. Come on!

The following morning we had a wonderful breakfast and conversation with a couple from Ireland. We enjoyed just listening to their accents. Then we drove to Custer State Park and hiked Harney Peak (the highest peak east of the Rockies), which was about 6 miles round trip. Here's a photo of us at the lookout on the way up - we were attempting to stay ahead of a huge group of slow hikers. :)

And here's us atop the tower trying not to blow away.

Stinking pine beetles are eating all the trees! Still a beautiful view. Unfortunately it wasn't as clear as normal because of a couple wildfires that were going.

The tower. It used to be a wildfire lookout station. We ate our Subway sandwiches and hiked back down because I had a serious craving for pop. Weird.

We were almost at the bottom when we looked back and saw the tower where we had come. We are awesome. And we had a great anniversary!