true outdoor experience...hiking

This last Sunday our unit decided to load up and take off into the beautiful wilderness of the Franklin mountains in El Paso... and I'm so glad we did. The path we decided on, we were told, was going to be about a 5 hour round trip and it would take us to the very tippity top of one of the peaks. Sounds easy enough, huh? Well, it wasn't too bad. Extremely beautiful and quite exhilarating. You wouldn't guess it because it's Texas, but up at the top, it was fa-reezing. We stopped to eat lunch up at the top as we breathlessly took in the scenery (it was really that pretty...we weren't just breathless because of the long hike :) We could even see a good chunk of Mexico from the top-including a huge Mexican flag! Check out the beauty...The middle peak was our destination, but we started on the other side of the mountain.

We caught beautiful glimpses of the sun as it peaked its head from behind the mountain just as we were starting out.

This is me, about halfway up...starting to get chilly, but almost there! El Paso was on both sides of the mountain range. That was kinda cool. There were only a few places on our hike where you could see ALL of El Paso at one time.

This is the view from the peak! This is actually looking into Mexico. 7400 feet above sea level here.

Just resting before the long hike down... All-in-all it was an amazing day. A great break in the monotony. Hooray for hiking!