The Quest for Donuts

Before you read:  I posted today about Glacier.  If you haven't seen it scroll on down, the pictures are nice.

The past two Sundays we've been out of town, and sadly have not seen Donut Man.  While croquet was going on someone suggested going to Donut Man on Monday (the next morning) before work.  So I agreed with Chris and Nick that we should go, especially because Chris had always tried to go and had always been too late.

Monday rolls around, we wake up early and cross the street...only to find that Donut Man is closed on Monday!  Oh no!  Chris was all sad once again and claimed that God simply did not want him to have donuts.  Nick and I latched onto this partially to make ourselves feel better about lack of donuts, and partially because making fun of one another seems to be a sport among the three of us.

Because we're stubborn we promised we'd go on Tuesday instead.  Another day of waking up far earlier than necessary was worth tasty donuts.  So what happens Tuesday?  We get to the door and Donut Man has a note saying that he'll be closed on Tuesday.  While Nick and I are about to cry from lack of donut (and Chris is now convinced someone up there hates him) the door opens and Donut Man himself steps out.  Chris doesn't care much, but Nick and I are kind of ecstatic on the inside.  He soothes our hurts by telling us that the Camperland people wore him out, and that because we were so sad he'd give us each a free donut the following day.

Donut Man had guaranteed nothing would go wrong, but I envisioned something like this happening to Chris:

(So I seriously spent about three minutes on that.  Don't judge!)

We became rather afraid a Magpie would steal his donut.  To ease the pain/not be bored we went to the Gravel Pit after work and swam around.  It was cold, Nick swam crazy distances, the usual.

Nick:  What are you doing?!

Me: Taking pictures!  (So be photogenic!)

Chris: *looks kind of evil*

So this morning, for the third morning in a row, we go to Donut Man...and are rewarded!  We got tasty-looking donuts and proceeded to the duck pond as usual.  This may not have been the best idea, given that comic up there.  The ducks were definitely plotting something:

I would be too!  The best donuts in the universe were at (and on) our fingertips!

That we were a little pumped was an understatement.

Look at those anticipatory expressions...Nick knows how tasty this will be, therefore he has the proper expression.

Right after this photo was taken, seven donuts were demolished.

Picture Time.

First off:  Happy Canada Day!!!  Canada's my fave.

So I believe I left off at lunchtime...well now.  Every day I leave lab at 11:55 and wait in the courtyard for the Solar kids to come out for lunch.  I listen to one song on my  iPod and try to guess when this building was built:

(I still haven't made a decision.)  At noon the church bells ring, and one to two minutes later they come out of this door:

 

Thursday they were late and I started sending Jenna a text asking what was going on.  Midway through this they come out the door, Nick sees me with my cell phone out and starts cracking up immediately, saying "I knew she'd be upset that we were late!"  Perhaps I'm too predictable?

Later that day we went to the Gravel Pit yet again, this time with Austin in tow.  It is somehow possible to carry on entire conversations with Austin without him actually uttering a word.

Jenna let me get her picture this time!

Friday

John's plane was delayed coming in, but this meant that I got to go with Chris to pick him up!  Robbie came too, because there wasn't much else to do at the time.

Standard ridiculously picturesque Bozeman scenery.

I didn't actually get pictures after this point in the evening.  We walked to MacKenzie River Pizza downtown and ate, then went to bed early because we were going to go hiking early the next day.

Saturday

I introduced John to the wonder that is Donut Man, and it turns out that even breakfast haters can't resist.  Then we joined Robbie, Chris, and Nick for a backpacking adventure to Hyalite Lake.

Everyone at the trailhead.  Robbie and I were lucky and didn't have to carry full-size hiking packs.  We're also the smallest of the group, so maybe it wasn't just luck there.  We walked through a mile-ish of the picture below and that was dandy.

The trail also has over ten waterfalls along it, and we stopped at Arch Falls below.

Understandably named.

Shortly after this we ran into snow, which is something we seem to excel at.

Unfortunately the photo above ended up being the beginning of the end of solid ground.  I slipped once and John made fun of me, but according to him I'm good with the comeuppance, because after that he found every weak spot in the snow that was to be found. 

After trudging through another mile or two of snow, we stopped for lunch and Chris took a group-minus-Chris photo:

I really have no idea what Nick is doing.

After lunch we should have just turned around, but instead decided to climb an impossibly steep, impossibly slippery, impossibly-disastrous-if-you-slid-back-down slope.  This image in no way does it justice.  It must've been a 70-degree incline.  We later figured out that the real trail was covered in over six feet of snow and whoever blazed the one we followed had obviously just been like "screw switchbacks."

We all made it alive to the top!

Unfortunately there was still another mile of snowy, slippery, screw-switchbacks climbing.

But then the trees cleared and we got to the lake...which was nearly frozen over.

We were way-high-up and so small!

What else would we do but decide to camp on six feet of snow by the frozen lake shore?

And so the next order of business was finding enough rocks and dead wood to build a fire pit and its accompanying fire.  Robbie was all over that one.

Then we decided that we needed something to sit on, so the guys provided me with the entertainment of hauling a dead tree to the fire pit (1/3 mile maybe?) and then splitting it in two in the most ridiculous ways possible:

By using sharp rocks!

By jumping in the center!

By sitting on it in unison!  Hilariously, this is what finally broke it.

After this we got out our food and had the tastiest hot dogs that were ever to be had.  Halfway through dinner a lone hiker came up and told us that he had passed someone who we'd seen up there earlier, and that the guy seemed "incredulous" that there were kids up there camping.  The guys thought it highly amusing, but I'm still not sure what to make of it.

After dinner it was time to dry out our socks and shoes.

Robbie's socks got super-dried.

We went to the ledge to watch the sunset:

Then as twilight came upon us we went back to camp and made s'mores (my doing!) and waited for the stars to come out.  That there were more than I'd ever seen goes without saying.

Sunday

We packed up early and managed to do some pretty good controlled sledding down to flatter (walkable) ground.  What took us an hour to climb took about ten minutes to descend.  The rest of the hike was generally nice and downhill, though we stopped from time to time to take pictures of waterfalls.

We returned, cleaned up, passed out, and later that evening John and I went to Plonk in downtown to eat.  It was super-tasty, but most tasty of all was the chocolate platter we had for dessert.  Homemade strawberry ice cream + single-origin-72%-dark-cocoa + mint chocolate + peppery chocolate + two truffles + sea salt and carmel chocolate = AMAZING

Um.  I like chocolate.