Our 7 day backpacking trip with students was incredible! The weather was much better than expected, which was a huge blessing because it was supposed to be rainy with thunder showers 5 of the 7 days, with a high of 40! It ended up raining a little bit one night, and then it was mostly sunny and pretty warm the rest of the week! It was so beautiful, as you can see in some of the pictures right below this post. You can also see that there was still quite a lot of snow, but it ended up being a fun challenge.

The group bonded and got along incredibly! It was a pretty mixed group in the sense that a lot of the students going did not know each other extremely well. One of the coolest parts of the week for me was hearing everyone's summarized life story around the campfire at night times. People were really honest and I feel like that was a huge source of bonding among the group. It was also nice to be away from civilization, phones, technology, email, etc for a week. It is amazing how much peace we all experienced. And because we had quite a bit of down time, we all got to spend a lot of time with God and one another in His glorious creation which was literally breathtaking at times and filled us all with so much joy and praise!! While we did not want to leave, I must admit that I was very excited to take a shower, sleep in my bed, and eat some good food:) We were all extremely smelly after not showering for seven days, but it was an incredible experience that we all embraced and grew from!