One last camping weekend with the girls!

I have been away since Friday morning doing one last camping trip in the Rocky Mountains before I go. I went with my niece and my two cousins.......one last girls weekend before I leave.

Even though the weather was rainy and on the chilly side, we had such a great time and lots of laughs. It was an emotional goodbye today.......my cousins are like sisters to me. They are wonderful young women and I cannot believe how fast they have grown up. And then there is my niece.....she and I are "BFF's" and I have been lucky enough to have one whole week with her. I have cherished this week with her and am not ready to say goodbye. I will miss her and my cousins so so much. Fortunately, I know that my niece is coming to visit in Mexico for 3 weeks at Christmas so that will keep me going.

I realized that I will also really miss the Rocky Mountains and their raw beauty. We were camping on a lake surrounded by mountains and I took Jackson for a swim every day.

Overall, the weekend was very relaxing, with the exception of Sunday night. At around 1am, Jackson woke us up with insane barking and baying and tore out of the tent through a small hole and started running around the tent frantically. I had never seen him act this way - I ran out after him and looked around but could not see anything in the woods. Nor was I about to set out to look! I brought him back in and tried to calm him down....then about 2 hours later, the same thing happened. Eventually, he calmed down. Around sunrise, yet another repeat performance from Jackson, so I looked outside the tent through a window and much to my shock, saw a rather large grizzly bear about 15-20 feet from the tent. I was frozen in shock - I could not move at all. All I could do was watch it helplessly. At one point, the bear turned around and looked in the direction of the tent........I was holding my breath, I was so scared. Then, it turned around and slowly walked away. I watched him until I could no longer see him in the woods. The next few hours seemed like an eternity. Eventually, my niece and I got enough courage to get out of the tent where we took a survey of our campsite. Nothing was damaged.......there was nothing in our campsite at all besides water bottles and camping chairs. All we saw were his very large footprints around our entire campsite. All I could think about was all the terrible stories about bear attacks on humans and how lucky we were.

Well, I am going to miss camping and hiking in the mountains, but the grizzlies, well, not so much.