One thing I've learned from this trip is to be regularly open to the unusual. Doing this makes the usual much more exciting.






God, I will knock and trust you to do the opening.

The city of Cusco was our first stop to get acclimated to the altitude and experience the culture before we took off on our trek. Here are a few glances.

I just got back from one of the greatest adventures of my life so far.
You know that list of things you want to accomplish at some point in your life that you keep wishing you could get around to?
Well, Adam and I were lucky enough to be able to check this trip off this list just months after writing it down.
We went to Peru to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.
There is much to tell, however, first I must introduce you to the Peruvians.

The beauty of blur.
Taken by Kyle DeLoach.

The destination was Nye, Montana.
The reason was to celebrate friendship.

"I don't know, man...let's do something manly and adventurous," was the only criteria given to us for the bachelor party. So off we went to backpack the Beartooth Mountains.

Was it manly?
Was it adventurous?

We carried 55 lbs. on our backs, set up camp by a frozen lake, smelled ripe, cursed steep inclines, reveled at the scenery at the end of those inclines, rolled boulders off cliffs just to hear the crackle of tree limbs, plodded through snow, stood within 20 feet of a moose, army-crawled through more snow, found a mountain lion skull, had a steady diet of Ramen and jerky, laughed into the night by the fire, dove into a glacier melt pond, lost the trail, found the trail, and killed a bear and made coats out of his hide.
(And only one of these activities cannot be proven as factual.)

However, infinitely more important than the right of passage into rustic manliness was the time spent realizing that our growing into men together has been a gift of adventure that none of us could ever have dreamed of.
I am blessed to have failed and succeeded with these guys by my side.

By the way, if you've never yelled from a mountaintop, you have not yet experience the full feeling of furious freedom.
"I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world."--Walt Whitman

Hope you enjoyed yourself, Kyle. I'll never forget it.