I decided to post all the pictures I had from my trip. I was not going to do this originally, since there were some pretty bad quality ones. But I decided to do this so you can get a better idea of what my crew was like. Some of these are not the best quality, (they might be blurry or dark) but they give you a good idea of what happened.
Thanks to NCOBS for letting me use the photos that Jen and Katie took!
If you click on the pictures they will get bigger so you can see everything better. 🙂
Day One
I’m the purple blob sitting down to the right of the bent over purple blob.
Packing the backpacks on the first night
Day Two
Those are my knees on the right…
Our Map lesson
If you click on this picture to make it larger, you will be able to see “Brett J” written on the duck tape on the backpack in the lower right corner of this picture. 😀
Moving out on the first day of hiking
That’s me right out in front. This is a couple of minutes after Bruce pulled me over the wall, while we were waiting for everyone else to get over it.
Getting ready to cross the Blue Ridge Parkway
View from the side of the Blue Ridge Parkway
Taking a break
One last view of civilization before we left it
That’s me right in the front again. This was right before we moved on.
Hanging out at a creek while filtering water
Bobby eating blackberries
My view for a lot of the trip
That’s my backpack in the lower left corner. The one with the blue bandana hanging on it. 🙂
Girl’s platform
Day Three
If you can’t find me here, I’ve got a quick tip for you. Look for the shortest kid in the entire row. You’ve found me! 😀
Ready to move out from camp on Day Three
Jen and Katie pulling out trash
I’m in the very back in this one – if you make the picture bigger you can see my watch and purple shirt behind Rebecca’s left hand.
Climbing the ladders
Bruce and Luke at the top to help people up
Katie climbing up to fasten a rope
Waiting our turn to climb up the rocks
I got to those rocks and I had my camera in my pocket. I pulled it out and took a couple of pictures, then turned and saw five people standing next to me with their cameras in hand. 😀
Everyone pulling out their cameras
View from the rocks
View from the rocks
On the rocks. Left to right standing: Ben, Kayce, Bruce, Me, Maggie, Jordan, Sarah Margaret. Sitting: Luke, Bobby
Jen and Katie on the rocks
The girls at the summit of Grandfather Mountain!
We had gotten to where we were so tired, we could fall asleep sitting up.
Bobby resting (or sleeping…) at the summit
And if we couldn’t fall asleep sitting up, it didn’t matter how uncomfortable the surface was. If we laid down, we were asleep. 😀
Kayce taking a nap at the summit
Another summit on Grandfather Mountain
See those two roads in the picture? The one on the right is the one we crossed earlier in the trip. Not the same spot, but the same road.
View from Grandfather Mountain
Bobby on top of the mountain with the bag of trash
Luke on the summit of Grandfather Mountain
Waiting to go down the ladders
Getting ready to go down more ladders
Climbing down a ladder
Putting up the tarp
Putting up the tarp
I sat in that empty spot between Bruce and Tullia. That green bowl and the water bottle sitting there are mine. 🙂 With this picture you can see how close we all sat during dinner – most of the time we had three people to a mat. There were a couple of times that there were only two, and if someone saw you sitting by yourself they would come sit by you “so you would not get lonely”.
Waiting for dinner. Left to right: Bobby, Bruce, Tullia, Maggie, Jordan
In this photo you can see a lot of our cooking supplies. The knife is on the ground to Rebecca’s left – you can see the white handle and the blade in its sheath. The two large pots and their lids are in front of her, with the spoon and one of the pot grips in the lid of the second one. The stoves are right above and underneath the watermark – the triangular stands with the round fuel holders in the middle.
Rebecca cooking dinner
Day Four
The Profile of Grandfather Mountain
Ben hopping down the mountain
They put Tullia’s heart shaped glasses on him so he could look at the world through the eyes of love. Don’t ask. LOL
Ben lying down taking a break
At this point Tullia, Kayce, Sarah Margaret and Katie had come back, since they had dropped off their weight at the bottom. Tullia insisted on taking my pack, and I did not protest too much. 🙂
Getting Ben down the mountain
I don’t know why these photos are so dark – it was still light enough to see pretty easily at this point.
Almost there!
I don’t know when this happened…
This is just a classic crew moment. LOL
This was the dinner that I was supposed to make…
Cooking the potato chowder, quinoa and cornbread for dinner
I guess they were tired after helping Ben? They didn’t even have their heads on the mat. LOL
Bruce and Luke taking a nap while we were waiting for dinner
Day Five
Learning how to close the “Dry bag” with our warm clothes in it
Trying to figure out how to steer
Bruce and Bobby in their canoe on the lake
Me in my canoe with Jen
This makes me laugh because it just so Rebecca. :D
“Ahh! There is a snake! On the log over there!” “Um, you do realize it’s dead, don’t you?”
Day Six
Me, Katie and Bruce getting our canoe into the water
That’s me in the pink on the left.
Waiting for the rest of the canoes to get into the water
Hanging out on the river
I was going to the bathroom when they were doing this. 😀 If you look at Tullia’s feet, (red helmet, purple pants) you can see the ugly, nasty booties that we had to wear for the river. (They were so gross!!)
Being goofy at lunch time
I saw this photo and it made me smile, because this is just so Ben. I don’t know how to explain it, but that expression is just Ben.
Taking a break on the river
Luke during his Rapids Swim Assessment
Swimming into the white water for the Rapids Swim Assessment
I was scared to death for this. We had to swim right into that big white spot, then turn and get into the right position. After letting the current take you downstream a bit, you had to swim against the current to get back close to where we started.
Me and Kayce being told what to do for our Rapids Swim Assessment
I made it! 🙂
Pulling myself out of the water after the Rapids Swim Assessment
Day Seven
Waiting for our turn to enter the rapid
Those big blue jugs held our water for those three days.
The canoes we used after they had been put on their trailer
Day Eight
This is probably one of my favorite pictures of us from our entire trip…
The Crew, Jen and Katie, and Jaime during our service
Day Nine:
Bruce laughing at me for trying to do a handstand
I was going to the bathroom for this too… By the time I got back it was time to move on again.
The rest of the crew with charcoal on their faces
Day Ten
I thought I did a really good job with my tarp, considering that I only had four strings!
My Solo tarp
Day Eleven
Katie cooking breakfast for us for when we came back from solo
The horrible ducky suits…
Wearing our ducky suits when it was pouring. The white spots are all of the dots of water on the camera.
A Bush Push is where you are walking on either a really overgrown trail, or no trail at all. This was like a deer path. As long as I kept my nose less than an inch away from Bruce’s backpack, I was fine! (Everyone else had so much stuff in their faces… :))
Our “Bush Push”
We had a couple of creeks to cross this day…
Bruce, Kayce and Luke ready to help us through the creek
Bruce helping Tullia through a bad spot
Maggie crossing the river (notice how it does not even reach her knees?)
Ben crossing the river (it’s only up to his knees)
Luke helping me cross a slippery spot right before a deep spot (notice that it is already almost up to my butt…)
One of the medium sized rivers we crossed
Day Twelve
The guys talking at the edge of the cliff
The Crew acting silly at the top of Table Rock Mountain
The clouds started coming in…
View from Table Rock
They started getting thicker…
View from Table Rock
And thicker…
View from Table Rock
Bruce is laughing at Luke and Bobby because they had their Hot Chocolate as powder. 😀
Luke, Bobby and Bruce
View from Table Rock
The Crew on the top of Table Rock Mountain
Resting at the summit of Table Rock Mountain
Talking at the summit of Table Rock
Using Rebecca’s mirror
Pretty clouds from the top of Table Rock Mountain
Day Thirteen
Painting Luke’s fingernails… :D
Luke, Kayce and Bruce after we painted their nails
Showing off their pretty purple nails
The Crew after the showers
Giving Bobby a “tattoo”
Davis and Grant, on the right, are two of Colter’s crewmates.
Talking to some of Colter’s crewmates. Left to right: Bobby, Jordan, Rebecca, Davis, Grant
This is just another classic crew moment
Day Fourteen
Bobby and Ben at the end
Other Stuff
These are the cards we used to rate where we thought we stood. Each card has one of the things that we had to do on it, and we would put them either in Training, Main, or Final. Or somewhere in between.
The cards
This was somewhere in the beginning of the trip, because none of the cards are even in Main yet. I think it was day three…
Blister care definitely was one of the more advanced ones. We all knew how to take care of blisters by then!
The cards
It made me laugh to see that hunger management was one of the more advanced ones. Bobby’s reason for putting it there? “We all say when we are hungry, and we generally pull out snack when someone says they are hungry. Because by then most of us are too.”
The cards
So that was my trip in pictures. I’ll try to remember to update the page with links to the appropriate part as I go. 🙂