I'm getting old...

I'm a bit behind posting things...

Jay had a strangely adventurous idea- to hike Timpanogos at night, while our kids were sleeping, and arrive at the top for the sunrise.  This would be the best time to be away from Hazel for so long, since she still nurses.  We are so lucky to have a girl in the neighborhood who was willing to sleep over at our house!!

It was so cute how Jay planned out how much water and how many calories we would need for the hike, and had packed up a backpack with both of our stuff. :)

Although we had both hiked timp once before (separately), unfortunately, neither one of us had hiked it when we were really paying attention to where the trail was.  It turns out, the Stewart Falls trailhead stems from the same parking lot, and in the dark, we set off, at about 11:45pm, there first.  

We got to the end, thinking we couldn't find the rest of the trail.  Then I spotted where we came from and said, "Oh here it is!"  (turns out, hiking in the dark can be confusing, despite our awesome/dorky headlamps)

So we headed back and then realized that we were retracing our steps.  Luckily, we had cell service, and Jay did a little research and found out that, yes, there was another trailhead and we had taken the wrong one. :(

We got back to the parking lot about 2 hours later.  We decided, we could still make it, and made our way up the right trail this time.  However, hence the title of this post, after about 5 minutes of steep incline, I started getting the same feeling a got a lot during this past pregnancy- a strange pain in my right leg/groin area, every time I had to lift my leg.  It wasn't too bad at first, and we had come all this way, so I didn't want to say anything about it.  However, after about 2 hours of hiking, it became unbearable and I knew that even if I could make it to the top, there's no way I'd be able to make it back.

Jay was a good sport and made no issue about turning around.  (and I'm so glad we did!  My leg really hurt the rest of that day!  Happily, it was completely fine when I woke up the next day)

Turns out that hiking down in the dark is much trickier than hiking up!

Even though we didn't make it all the way up, it was still fun to sneak off in the night and be "wild" and adventurous :)  I thought we had better document the night with us in our glory.  (and me sans makeup...)

If you ever want to do it yourself, just be sure you don't take the trail clearly marked "Stewart Falls" (not as clear in the dark...) and dress warmly.  It was much colder than I had expected.