In a nutshell, my trip was everything I hoped it would be. It was a much needed retreat from life, and a chance to organize my thoughts and priorities. I feel like I made some decisions that will keep me focused on the present, and not worried so much about the future. Also, I got a chance to develop my leadership skills through good information and real-life leadership labs. It was really good. I highly recommend NOLS to anyone that is interested in developing leadership and has the guts to live in the back-country.
Of the decisions I made, the biggest one was to stop pursing my own business. Over the last 2 years or so I have made a few attempts to get a website business off of the ground. I have started to slowly shed that work simply because it takes too much time, money, and stress to keep afloat. After that I had a few solid entrepreneurial ideas, however I've decided that again I do not have the time or the capital to truly invest myself into another venture. Most importantly, I have plenty of work to do at the church and I feel the greatest reward will come from serving there. In short, my attention has been divided by too many activities for too long. By letting go of some of these "pipe dreams" I'll be able to focus more on ICY and less on money and business.
Now we can move on the pictures. I uploaded most of my pictures to flickr, but if you don't have the time to surf there here are some highlights.
Picture of me on the trail
This is the most common "scenery" I saw.
Europe Canyon, it looked like a foreign planet.
View from the top of Mt. Victor, this was my highlight of the trip.
My biggest fish, 19"
