Yurt Sweet Yurt

I am back from the overnight excursion to the Yurt and have had the time of my life...
Us "Gals" (Alison, Kristine, Michele, Erica, Eileen and Yours Truly) all spent this past Saturday night on Yurt Ridge at the Hidden Valley Nature Conservancy off of the Egypt Road in Jefferson, Maine.

The excursion went a little something like this:

At around 6:00 pm (That's WELL past dark around these parts), Kristine, Michele, Eileen and I hiked out to the yurt to meet Alison and Erica and Erica's wonderful dog Micah (our "protector"), who were already there. This was my first real "hiking" experience AND my first "nighttime" hiking experience, which meant a lot of huffing and puffing, hauling, and headlamps. Very interesting hike out there, as it was supposedly only a "quarter of a mile" to the yurt. Quarter of a mile? Not so much. I used to do at least a quarter of a mile to and from the subway in Boston every day and this was no quarter of a mile: this was my friends lying to me for my own good. But seriously, I would be very interested to know the OFFICIAL distance from the head of the trail to the yurt, because of course every hike seems endless when it's dark and you're carrying a heavy load uphill in the snow to someplace you've never been before.

The yurt itself (once we got there) was lovely. Situated on Yurt Ridge, overlooking a little lake/pond thing and miles and miles of woods, it truly was Yurt Sweet Yurt. Being girls on a girl's weekend, we had our priorities straight and started COOKING. My friend Alison is the world's most amazing cook and we all partook of her dee-lish chicken dumpling stew. The next course was steamed asparagus and mac & cheese, with red wine. This is the crowd I run with: No trail mix for us! When these gals do something, they do it right and in this case, that meant gourmet eats, made all that much better by the HUNGER I built up hiking all the way out there (okay, no more whining about the hike out there, I promise: it really wasn't that bad).

The rest of the night was spent cranking the woodstove, eating MORE yummy food (birthday cake and brownies!!!), toasting each other, howling at the moon and talking the way that ONLY girls can. Mostly, we just appreciated each other's friendship. After we were all stuffed, after many, many "Deliverance" jokes, and after wiggling into those crazy mummy-style sleeping bags, we went to bed sometime after midnight. Yes, midnight!!! Are we cuh-razy or what???

In the morning, after crawling out of bed (or in my case negotiating my way off of the top bunk)and the obligatory cold, cold, early morning trip to the out-house, Alison and Erica made the BEST egg-veggie-bacon-home-fries-cheese-salsa burritos (Four-star, all the way!) for our breakfast. We packed up our stuff, had a nice little surprise visit from the owner of the Conservancy (who, I think, was seeing if "those 6 crazy girls" survived a night in the great outdoors), signed the "Log" Book and went for a snow-shoe hike. Perfectly wonderful weekend.

Now I'm back to my real-life here at the store: well-rested, a little ache-y, but most definitely smelling better (ahhh...bathtub, I love you!!!) No need to send a search party for me. I am now a genuine "outdoors-y" girl and cannot WAIT to get back together with my girls and spend another night in the Yurt Sweet Yurt.

See you soon,

XOXO Rhea