GIRRAWEEN!: four of the most breathtaking, painful, and smelliest days of my life

This was exactly what the title of this blog says.  It was incredible, painful, smelly, beautiful, interesting, hilarious, scary, and wonderful all at the same time.  This was the second trip for my outdoor education class and we went to Girraween National Park.  This trip was much trickier than the first trip because the instructor did not help us at all! My group had about 10 of us and the purpose was to hike around the entire national park in the four days. We had a starting point and an ending point.  We would walk and walk and walk until we got to our new campsite each night.  All together I think they said we hiked about 35 miles in the four days. Yah may not sound  that bad... but imagine doing it up mountains with a 30 pound pack on you.  It was very difficult! The instructor did not come with us on our hikes so we had to find our way the whole four days by just a map and a compass.  this was not easy! My group did get lost (so the girls would say). We had two boys in our group who would never admit we were lost. But we definitely were. Boys will be boys I suppose.  We walked so far out of the way our radio lost reception so we couldn't talk to our instructor. We had to walk back about 2 miles just so we could talk to him to figure it out. One day my group went a little out of the way and we ended up in about a half a mile of thrown bushes!!! this was no fun!! had to scrape our way out of there. I had a million cuts on my legs and still one huge across my shin that will probably scar!

On this trip I of course saw amazing things. Sunrises and sunsets, 100 kangaroos in a valley, watering holes to swim in, and went caving.  I'll describe some pictures below so you can get a better idea of everything!

When we were hiking one day we saw sooo many kangaroos just hoping along! Incredible!

Just a fun pic when we were on top of a mountain one day watching the sunrise!

One morning we got up at 4:15 AM to do a hike up Mount Norman which was the tallest one there and we brought our sleeping bags so we could sleep until it rose. It absolutely sucked waking up and doing that our last day when we were in so much pain. But once we got to the top and watched it rise it was incredible and cold! :)

My group! HAPPY HIKERS!!!

Every night we would set up a new camp. We had the same stoves as the last trip. We couldn't have a big bon fire in the National Park so my group decided to use our stoves to have a nice little fire :) We made warm jello this night. Just mixed the jello with hot water and it was a nice little treat for a hard days work :)

Caving was pretty cool. Although it was not what I expected. They weren't really actual caves... it kind of just ended up being a bunch of huge rocks that were piled on top of each other and we had to squeeze our way through!! It was very difficult sometimes and I didn't think I'd fit sometimes but we always managed to squeeze or way through! My body bent in ways it should never bend...

Just crawling up a rock. Almost fell... no good... But i survived :)

Hiking, hiking, and more hiking....

Long way down after a long way up... I swear it was steeper than it looks! Sometimes walking back down the mountains was worse than walking up! My toes started to hurt so bad because they were pushing against my shoes on the way down. 

A pretty watering hole. Some people jumped in but not me... way to cold and sore :)

Well thats about all I can think of about it right now! Hope you enjoyed! 19 days left! YIKES!