Trek Day 1

What an amazing experience our Trek was.  It was such an opportunity to be able to go as a MA and PA with our stake.  I wish that I would've taken my camera to get some of the "family" shots that the professional crews didn't get...but that would be my only regret with the entire experience.    

We did bucket checks with our "kids" on Wednesday night. They all came to the church and we got to meet them and go through their things.  Thursday morning we met at the Stake Center at 7am and heard "Joseph Smith" speak to us for about 20 minutes before we got on the buses by company color (We were red) to go to the trail head.

Our assignment on the bus ride up was to design our family flag.  I gave that assignment to our oldest boy and girl in the family:  Branden and Georgi.   Since writing on the bus was near impossible - they came up with the idea to be the Chesnuts and we decided to design the flag once we arrived.  Little did we know there wouldn't be any good place to write once we got there either.  Our flag was kinda ugly.  I wrote "Chesnuts" in the middle and drew what I thought a chesnut looked like (which turned out more like and alien lifeform.  But it worked. We all signed it and waited to begin our journey.  Now it hangs in our garage.  I love it.

Family Picture before we started on the trail.  Front Row:  (L-R) Georgi  Mozingo, Julia Larson, Me, Lydia Stimpson.  Behind Lydia is Hannah Boren (then to her L), Branden Hales, Brennan Klemme, Jaden Arsenault, Travis.  And then in the cowboy hat in the back is Tanner Wood.  And our company commanders Bishop Larry and Sunny Perkins (with suspenders and hands in pocket).

What I can say about day one - there were some steady climbs during the entire trek- day one had a specific drop down a steep mountain that they had to tether the carts with a rope to even get us down.  It was nuts and that steep decent is how Travis and I both got blisters right off the bat...and we had trained and trained.....hoping not to get blisters.  oh well.  This picture doesn't do it justice as to how incredibly steep it was. - it was ridiculous to go down.

Just after we got down this hill - it was lunch time.  Here we are chilling on our buckets eating and chatting with anyone who wanted to chat...it was at this point, I knew I had blistered feet...

At the end of the trail - we rolled into camp to some divine teriyaki chicken for dinner.  The kids had all kinds of activities to do, dancing, stick pull, guns shooting, sack racing, etc.  Travis and I sat on our buckets at our cart because our feet hurt so bad.  We chatted with Jeff and Lisa Wood (also in our company) and a few other couples (Tim and Sharla Jenkins from Purple) .  During that evening's events the "MOB" came...guns blazing, sticks lit on fire, etc.  We were asked to leave the area the Mormons were not welcome.  So, off we went.  We pulled our carts another mile and just before we pulled into camp there was a monster hill waiting for us.At the end of an already long day, this was daunting.  We pulled with everything we had - Travis says for him this was one of the hardest parts of trek (that hill).  There were two "angels" who came and helped us up (Pres. Tanner and Glen Stephenson - the TREK director) they had on white bandannas and helped us push a bit of the hill.  It was brutal.

That night after we got tents set up - we had a small FHE with our kids...scriptures and talked about the day and then the kids were offered "second dinner"  from the food staff...they went and they ate ---hot dogs....I did not. I slept - well sort of....Travis slept - I tried. :)