Leaving Sapphire
We spent the night at Sapphire Lake and were greeted with a sunrise so lovely that it tempted me to stay at the lake a second day. But by then we had already committed to finding a campsite with shade. So, after breakfast we packed up our stuff and headed back down to Emerald Lake. We told ourselves that if one of the few shaded campsites at Emerald were unoccupied we’d consider staying there for the night, but that didn’t end up being the case. We did, however, stay for an hour, did some fishing, went for a swim and then headed back down the trail. Days prior, as we headed up the trail we had scouted some fun sites we wanted to camp at on the way back down. There was one in particular, in the woods, right next to a flowing creek, that caught our attention. So, having given up on both Sapphire and Emerald lakes, we set our sights on that creekside spot. The hike down was long, but our packs were lighter and our spirits were high. And, to our good fortune, no one had beaten us to the spot by the creek. So that became our home for the remainder of the day. We set up camp, filtered water, took a dip in the creek and spent the rest of the day eating, lounging and laughing. Not our original plan, but lovely nonetheless.
"There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars."
-Jack Kerouac
