Some of my favorite vacation memories come from the backpacking trips my family likes to take in the Wind Rivers in Wyoming. Although the long hikes into camp are never easy, it’s always worth it because the Wind Rivers are so beautiful. One year is particularly memorable to me though because we got lost on our way to base camp and added an extra two or three miles on to our hike. By the time we reached camp that year, we were exhausted.

Our destination was Twin Lakes, specifically the camp my uncle and his kids had set up after they hiked in the day before the rest of the group. I’m not entirely sure when we got lost, but somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn, and didn’t realize we were off course until we ran out of trail headed in the direction we thought we needed to go. We were wondering whether we might need to hike up a river when my uncle contacted us by radio and told us we were off course. Luckily he contacted us before we got too far off course, and we had only added a couple of miles on to our hike.

Looking back, it’s a funny thing to remember. But at the time, hiking that extra two miles back to camp seemed like it might kill me because I had already hiked ten hard miles with forty or fifty pound pack on my back. However, the camp at Twin Lakes was well worth the extra two miles, it was one of the most beautiful areas of the world I have ever been in.

 – Lydia Ross