Trek, Day 4, Hot as He#!*

Is that appropriate?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Plugging along.  Thursday morning, I slept in till 6:30am.  Yuck.  MM and I had to drive into Kennewick.  I needed dry ice for root beer and MM needed to get all the family and company pictures printed.  Thankfully the Fred Meyer had enough dry ice.  I needed over 50 lbs of dry ice.  I had called them in advance and just prayed that would do the trick.  I bought myself a pair of flip flops too.  My ankles were getting seriously chafed from wearing boots and socks in that heat.  It was so strange to be in the Fred Meyer.  My trek clothing wasn't too weird, but I was definitely envious of the normal clothes in there.

The printing was going to take several hours so MM and I headed back to camp.  I wanted to get started on the root beer so it would be ready for the kids when they arrived at base camp.  They were supposed to arrive at around 11am, but things didn't go quite according to plan.  It took them awhile to get going on the last stretch.  Plus that last stretch turned out to be much longer than they planned on.  Not only that, but a small group decided to take a shorter route that lead them to a cliff.  Elle was part of that group.  In the middle of getting the root beer ready (thankfully aunt Julie was there to help), I was pulled into the cooling trailer.  Elle had fallen apart right at the end.  That last day ended up being the hottest day of the trek.  She was so devastated that she wasn't able to finish it.  Once she was feeling better I took her over to where the carts were pulling into camp.  It took them a long time to trickle in.  They had to take a few trucks over to rescue some people.  They were dropping like flies again.  The kids were so excited when they made it to base camp though.  The green grass alone was enough to lift their spirits.  They had sprinklers going at the end of the strip.  I even took a quick run through it.  By this point we were stripping down to our bloomers.  Some lucky dogs had even brought regular clothing. Wish I had thought of that.

There were a few activities set up for the kids, but it was pretty casual.  The root beer was delicious, even if we did use hose water to make it.  At least it was potable!

By the end of the evening, Elle was wilting again.  She had gotten pretty severely dehydrated.  She spent the last couple hours in one of the RV's, resting in the AC, she even slept for a bit.  We ended up going into Hermiston with Aunt Julie and spending the night in their hotel room.  I bought Elle a plate of bacon at the Denny's next door.  I did some wash too, but my whites needed a serious amount of bleach.  It was nice to wear mostly clean clothes AND to have a hot shower!  The bed was nice, but I still only got about 5 hours of sleep that night.  Uncle Robert and I headed back into camp at 6:30am while Elle slept in.  She and Aunt Julie got in at around 9:30am.

There was a closing talk at the end.  The buses weren't scheduled to arrive till around 11:30 so they did an impromptu square dance.  It was a great idea, everyone was dying to get home, but it took their minds off of it.  I rode home on Elle's bus.  Turned out to be a bad bus though.  It started overheating when we hit Cascade Locks.  They tried to fix it, but were unsuccessful.  We ended up squishing onto the other two buses that were with us.  I had to sit on the floor for a while, but a nice young man eventually gave me his seat (I sound like an old lady, don't I?).  If we had been delayed long enough I would have had Jacob come and pick us up.

Arriving home was beautiful.  Got everything put away, took a long and cleansing shower and slept for about 17 hours that night.  Elle took about a week to feel better, but they told us to expect that.  Poor kid.

The best part was listening to some of the youth speakers on Sunday.  It definitely made a huge impression on them.  There's nothing quite like hard work mixed with some spirituality.