Hello Mr. Echo!

Saturday, November 22nd: Keven and I were invited by our coolest friends, Diego and Mariela, to go to Echo (near Thousand Oaks) to go rock climbing. This place was so beautiful! One of the best parts about rock climbing is you see things that you would never know existed. The views that we see from the rocks are just amazing! This was definitely one of our favorite climbs because it was challenging and really pushed us! Thanks so much for taking us Mariela and Diego! On the way up, I was really car sick. I felt like throwing up and didn't want to talk to anyone because it would make it worse. For those of you that don't know this about me....I can get car sick reading a text message that says "how's it going", on a straight road in the city, going 40 mph! yea, we laugh about it all the time. haha! So you could only imagine how sick I felt going back and forth on this hill for about 45 minutes! BUT we got there and the fresh air helped me feel A LOT better!! This first picture is probably really scary, but it was actually kind of funny (once we realized Kev was okay.) The rock we were climbing was about an hour or so away from where we parked. So on our hike down, Keven was behind us, making sure I wouldn't die probably. On our water break, we stopped and I told Keven that he needed to remind me to take pictures on the way back. As I was talking to him I turned back and saw this.....

You could imagine how freaked out I was. The best part was Keven had no clue. hahah! We all were like "what the heck happened!?" When we were hiking, there were a couple parts that we had to cross through bushes and trees and twigs. Well I guess one jabbed Kev in his head!! We walked for awhile, so he probably thought it was sweat or something. It looked a lot worse then it was!This was half way to our spot. We wanted to get to the rock on the other side. We finally got to our destination and it was such a sweet spot. It was really hot that day, so we got the only spot that had shade for when we were going to eat lunch. Keven lead his first climb and did such an awesome job! When someone "leads" a climb, you basically start off climbing without connecting to the rock and you are the one to strap in the rope to the rock. You can imagine how intimidating that is, but he did amazing! Good job honey!
This rock was so awesome because it was a two pitch. A two pitch means you climb half way up the rock, bring the rope up, and then someone belays you from the middle of the rock instead of the bottom. There are more then one pitches on the big rocks. We calculated that this one was about 200 feet from bottom to top!! You could only imagine the views we had!

Here's Keven on the second pitch. Mariela lead the second pitch and was at the top to take pictures of my love!Then Diego went to the top so he could get some in action shots of me. Thanks for doing that guys!! As you can see, the person belaying is just strapped to the rock. Try leaning back on that! Ah!I got to the top! It was such an awesome feeling!Repelling down was a lot of fun!!Here's the four of us after we were done climbing. Diego had two more in him, so he went to the intense rocks! He's a maniac! :)

By the time we got back to the car it was dark! It was such a nice long day!! We then went to Red Robin and got our grub on! We are so grateful that we were able to go, see and experience God's beautiful creations! Thanks again Hellewell's!!