Lower Purgatory Hike

Monday evening my husband said to me at the dinner table, "Do you want to go back to the mountains this week?" We have been sitting at over 100 degrees for weeks on end at home as well as drought conditions causes for weary souls.

The sweet dynamics of being basically retired is that we both enjoy traveling and we enjoy spure of the moment. I'm so thankful and I know that my Man is as well. Tuesday we scurried with lawn work, grocery shopping, getting our bikes tuned and serviced, a sitter for Daisy our 9 year old basset, visiting family and oh yes, laundry!

We left Wednesday morning for ur cabin and as we drove into the mountains we were blessed with a wonderful mountain rain shower and cooler temps. It was still raining when we arrived at our cabin and the temperature was 56 degrees around 4:00 p.m. Back at home at 9:00 p.m. a friend shared with me that it was still 111 degrees on Wednesday evening! So hard to imagine that 4.5 hours later we can see that big of a difference in the temperature! I'm so thankful that when we bought our cabin we made the decision to retire to be able to enjoy a small second home.

Thursday morning we went on a "group" hike to Lower Purgatory. There were 25 adults and children along with 8 dogs. We each packed a lunch to enjoy at the turn around spot in a lovely meadow on our hike before returning to our starting point. The neat thing is that our leader plans and does group hikes in this area twice a week, making it a joy for those that come in for a long weekend or even for those folks that stay all summer.


We hiked a total of 4.66 miles in just over 4 hours including out resting times and dining. The last 3/4's of a mile down it began to lightly rain and hail the size of pea's fell. No thunder or lightening, and then when we made it to our vehicles the rain came in sheets and the lightening and thunder was incredible!!! God was so watching over us and protecting us through out our hike.

**This is the meadow where we enjoyed lunch

**The above picture I took as we were leaving the meadow and you can see the storm moving in**

Bill even enjoyed a "siesta" before dinner last evening! ;-)

When we finished up the two of us chatted how much going on the group hike was something new for us and that we wished we would have gotten on board before now. It was a perfect day and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!!