It's too early and cold for this! Our first real hike!

This week's hike started off Friday night (well, at least mentally it did) when I realized that we had to drive to Lake Elsinore at 6:30 am the next morning. I did not want to drive an hour to hike in the 45 degree whether, but then I remembered why we are doing this (or should I say that Phil reminded me)...people who suffer from cancer do not get to say, "no it's too early for treatment, or it's too cold for treatment!" They just get it to live. So, I got over myself, and we went out to buy me a waterproof/ warm coat because the forecast predicted rain once again.

Even though I had come to terms with the early morning I was going to endure the next day, I have to admit that hearing "Eurotrance" at 6:00 am was a bit alarming (pardon the pun). Nonetheless, I got out of bed (not until I had hit SNOOZE several times), got dressed, made breakfast, and headed out to Lake Elsinore.

This was our first real hike! If you have been reading our posts, you know that our hikes up to this point have really been walks up paved hills. Saturday we were in a forest with dirt and trees. It was exciting! We completed about 6.5 miles in total. And although the rain threatened to shower us, it was just that, a threat. We managed to stay warm and dry! The hike was fairly flat with little climbing in most parts. There were a few more challenging spots that required work, and at one point we had a choice to take a longer, flatter path or a steeper, shorter path. We choose the steeper path, and I thought it was a great idea to run the first part of it. What was I thinking? I eventually slowed down and allowed Phil and another hiker to pass me, while I stopped to catch my breath. I stayed right behind them the rest of the way up though, and, in what felt like a blink of an eye, we were at the top.

I think we were out for a little under 4 hours (partially because of the stops we made...when you hike in a group, it is different than hiking just the 2 of us), and made it out of the forest just before the rain hit!

It was a good hike, and we are looking forward to many more!

On a separate note, along with training physically for this hike, we are still faced with another challenge: raising $8000 toward a cure! So, that being said, we are planning a few events. The first one is a garage sale that we will be holding to help us raise money toward our fundraising goal. It'll be on Sunday, March 21. If you have anything you would like to get rid of and would like to donate it to our garage sale, let us know!

The other one we are planning will be an open house thank you to our donors party. You will all be invited to that event. There will be food, raffle prizes, and perhaps one of my famous cakes..we are still working out the details, but we will keep you posted!

Thank you for all your support through this challenge. We couldn't do it without you!

Stacy