Kudos to you man!
I might soon come there for further studies(still might take years though) and if it happens to be around colorado I will have to visit this place.
While going through this post, I had a wild nostalgia of this movie that I once saw called "Wild" - A Reese Witherspoon one, where she sets her path to the Pacific crest trail. Frankly speaking, I don't know a lot about your places and the first thing I did after going through your awesome post was check if it falls in the same trail LOL.
The captions are just so much fun!