Kirkwood Retreat

Last weekend, Rhea, Kathy, Karen (friends from church) and I, went to Kirkwood for a weekend retreat. Kirkwood is located in the Sierra mountains at an elevation of 7, 800 feet. There were remnants of snow in the mountains because 2 days before, it had snowed there.

We arrived at the condo in Kirkwood late Friday night because Kathy forgot the keys to the condo and only realized it about 31 miles before we reached our destination! :-) We turned back to the closest restaurant/bar that had a phone that we could use. The bar-tender was an older man, and there were girlie pictures lined on the shelves behind him. He let us use the phone and Kathy and Rhea kept putting dollars on the bar, because he hinted that we could pay him with kisses if we didn't have enough dollars!

After much calling around without any solution to our predicament, we managed to persuade Richard, Kathy's husband, to drive 1 hour 20 minutes to meet us and give us the keys. All of us ladies voted Richard, Husband of the Year. :-)

After breakfast on Saturday morning we drove a few miles to the entrance of a hiking trail. The trail was called Carson Pass Trail situated in the Eldorado National Forest.

L-R: Me, Rhea, and Kathy

The forest was beautiful, and the smell of fresh pine was invigorating! I was totally out of shape and panted most of the way up the trail. :-) We took a little detour off the trail to look at Frog Lake.

Frog Lake

We took about 3 hours 20 minutes to complete our hike. Karen and Kathy went further than Rhea and I. That night I felt my leg muscles ache from the workout that I gave them earlier in the day.

After spaghetti dinner, Kathy and I did some scrap booking while Karen and Rhea watched Casablanca. After a couple of hours of scrap booking, I gave up and watched The Incredibles. The Incredibles is a really fun movie! I thoroughly enjoyed it.

My first scrapbook. I started with Duncan's first year.

On Sunday, after a short worship time, clean up and laundry, Karen, Kathy and I took a walk on the grounds of Kirkwood. Kirkwood is more a skiing resort than anything else. It is really beautiful there with the mountains in the background.

We left Kirkwood at about 1.20 p.m. I did better on our way down the mountains than I did going up. I got sick and had to stop to throw on the way up! :-)

We hope to go back to Kirkwood in the spring for another retreat. According to Kathy the hiking trails are beautiful in the spring with wild flowers every where.