We were in the car, riding up the mountain, passing many trees and cliff sides, but not much else. I was beginning to feel the pressure in my ears because of the increasing altitude.
“Where is this place?” asked my little sister Megan.
As we approached our destination, we were getting farther and farther away from anything we knew from back home. We saw lots of small restaurants and shops, such as no name restaurants I would never consider eating at. The only resemblance of home was a Walmart we passed on our way to Crystola. We drove up a narrow, dusty road, approaching some trees. From the tops of the trees, our cabin appeared. The road was made of pebbles; we were surrounded by trees, grass, and wilderness. We drove up the driveway of our two-family cottage, and pulled up next to our friends. I swung open the car door, and jumped out. It had been raining, and the ground was wet. You could hear the rain slowly dripping off of the roof. Filled with excitement, we ran to the door. We opened the first door, but after a little area for hanging coats, there was another door.
“Do you have the key?” I asked my mom.
“Yes, it is right here,” she said as she took it off of the wall right next to the door. It was obvious we were far away from any civilization as the owners had no fear of burglars, only wild animals. The door wasn’t locked, yet the trash cans were. So bizare! We opened the door eagerly and ran inside. We kicked off our shoes, and looked around in awe. The house amazed me, and I was surprised at how different it was from my house back in Kansas City. There was a wall made almost entirely out of windows. In the yard, I saw a picnic table, a fire pit, and a swing set. I turned around and was faced with a wooden staircase leading upstairs to a balcony. It was narrow and creaky, so we went up single file. My friends, Kaitlyn and Sarah, Megan, and I ran upstairs and peeked in every door, every room, scouting out which room we wanted. In one room, there was a forest mural with huge tents from floor to ceiling. Another was an old fashioned kids’ room with a chest of toys and clothes to play with and two beds called “grandma’s attic.” To our disappointment, Megan and Sarah got the room with the tents, but it wasn’t all bad. While Kaitlyn and I were looking around our room, we found a remote sticking out from my bed. What a surprise! We experimented and found out it could raise and lower the head and foot of the bed. After taking turns laying on the bed and playing with the remote, we noticed a basket of candy underneath. We had no idea why it was there. This was a mystery that would not be solved until later.
Once we were done checking out our rooms, we all met downstairs. On the table, we found a map with instructions and a story about finding a lost treasure. This, we would have to investigate later. We had no food, so we ate at a little restaurant close to the house. On the way home, we stopped at the Walmart to buy groceries. When we got home, we settled in and went to bed. In the morning, we wanted to find out about the lost treasure, so after we all ate breakfast, we gathered around the table and read the paper we found with the map. We decided to head off on the adventure to find the treasure. We all got dressed, packed water bottles and walkie talkies, grabbed the map, and headed out. We found the start of the trail, which was out in front of the house on the edge of Pike’s Peak National Forest, and started off.
The map was crude and hard to follow, as the meandering trails were measured in paces and were not very well defined. We had a lot of difficulty figuring out where we were supposed to be going and couldn’t find any of the landmarks mentioned on the map. After a few hours of searching, with no luck finding the treasure, we finally found one of the landmarks on the map and found out we had accidentally taken a short cut by going to the end first and then coming back around. We were now very close to the beginning. We decided to split up; my mom and dad followed the trail backwards towards the beginning, and my sister and I went the right direction on the trail, back to the end. We found the cave where the treasure was said to be hidden and found a large tin can inside. We cautiously grabbed the can and looked inside. To our disappointment, there was no treasure inside, but a note instead. It read, “For safekeeping, we have moved the treasure inside, under the bed in grandma’s attic.” Then we understood. We told our friends about our previous discovery of the candy under my bed and decided to head back.
We all went back down the trail and met my parents near the beginning. We briefly compared our experiences on the trail after we split up and headed back home. On our way, we told my parents about the note and the candy under my bed. We were bursting with excitement and couldn’t wait to get home and dig into our delicious treasure. When we arrived back at the cabin, we raced into my room to devour our candy.