Running, Jumping, Climbing Trees

The problem with going on adventures is that I get busy doing that and can't find time to blog about it. This wouldn't really be a problem (because living life is better than writing about it any day) except my readers seems to get cranky if I don't post often enough. It's both flattering and annoying.

Anyway, this last weekend I was as far from my computer as I can get, sort of. I went camping at Dead Horse Point with a bunch of friends. It was a lot of fun. I learned something about myself: my idea of camping is not exactly compatible with other people.

When I go camping, I like to take as little as possible and spend as much time as I can hiking and exploring. Especially being where we were, with Dead Horse Point, Canyonlands and Arches right at our fingertips, my ideal weekend would have been getting up early, having a quick breakfast, packing a lunch and hiking until I couldn't walk and then doing it again the next day.

I understand that it's a little unreasonable to expect a group of 8 people to really be able to do that, but this weekend was almost the complete opposite of that. We did manage to get up early, but then it took 2 hours for us all to make and eat breakfast each day. Breakfast tended to consist of something elaborate and messy (albeit delicious) that used up every dish we brought. Then some of the people I was with couldn't handle hiking more than about 5 miles a day. I feel like I spent most of the first day hopping from foot to foot waiting to get out hiking and then being disappointed by the silly little walks we went on.

That's a little bit of an exageration, but it really was frustrating. At some point I decided to take a zen approach to it all and just go with what the group wanted to do. I was still a little understimulated, but I managed to have fun anyway. It was sort of neat to do the more touristy side of Arches- we usually don't bother with all that. It was also kind of nice to force myself to sit still for a while and just do nothing while everyone else was dinking around. Plus it's always rejuvenating to get down to southern Utah.

Here's the whole gang:

I Guess It's About Time

I meant to blog about stuff earlier this week, just didn't get around to it. So here's a quick catch up.

Last weekend I went camping with my dear ol' dad. We went down to Grand Staircase... somewhere a few miles outside Escalante. I could show you on a map if I really concentrated, but I really don't know where exactly we were. It was really nice to get out of the city and into the desert. I've been wanting to go for a while.

The reason we went where we did was that Dad stumbled upon this spot in March. Just a short way below our campsite is a spot of sandstone kind of simiar to The Wave in Coyote Buttes... near the UT/AZ border. Or at least that's what I've been told. I've never been to The Wave myself. But the stuff we had was pretty neat. Here, look at some pictures:
















Kinda neat, eh?

We hiked about 8 miles on Saturday- went past the pseudo-wave thing down into Phipps Wash to Phipps Arch. It was lovely, but we were hiking in deep sand the whole time. That's not really the most fun thing to do. I figured out why about half way through. When you're hiking in sand like that, it makes you feel like your legs are shorter than they are. Your stride gets super short and with each step you move considerably less far than you're used to. It's frustrating.

Speaking of sand, Dad managed to get the car stuck. We tried just about everything we could to get it out. Eventually we had to call a tow truck (I should thank Verizon for actually having service out in the middle of nowhere... kind of. And AAA for sending a truck out to the middle of nowhere) to get pulled out of the sand. Here's a video of that:



It's not nearly as fun as I hoped it would be. But you can see it was quite the endeavor to get the car out of the sand.

Sunday we packed up camp and drove to Bicknell to do a little bike ride. The plan was to get 35 miles in, but we took a wrong turn and ended up only going 20.

All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good weekend.

Sad Day

I'm kind of disappointed about this weekend. I was supposed to go camping with my Dad. We were going to go to this random place he accidentally stumbled on a while ago out in the middle of nowhere, southern Utah. He can't go now though because he messed up his back and... well he can barely walk for the pain. So he can't go.

Yeah, I can go without my Dad, but I don't want to go by myself. Besides it being more fun to hike/camp with a friend or two, it would be nice to have someone to split gas and fees and to entertain me during the long drive. Unfortunately, I don't have very many friends who are into the camping thing.

No, that's not true. I have tons of friends who are into "camping." That is, sitting around a campsite drinking beer. Good luck getting any of them to spend all day hiking. And that's what I want to do, so there are limited people to ask. All those people are busy this weekend, so I'm stuck with my disappointment.

Put on Your Reading Eyes, It's Gonna Be a Long One

Another awesome weekend. Made no less awesome by the fact that it started on Thursday (meaning that I worked a total of 7 days in the last two weeks).

I'll spare you the details of the Thanksgiving feast. It was pretty typical- family, friends, food. It's nice to have one holiday that isn't so much about blatant commercialization. Just about gluttony in the food sense. I'd kill myself if I had to listen to Thanksgiving carols or buy T-day presents. Even if the origins of the holiday are a little sketch, it's nice to have an excuse to get together with good people and recognise how lucky we really are. It's just a shame we can't be so thankful all year round.

5 Things I'm Thankful For This Weekend

1. My wonderful family and great friends

2. Not being anywhere near a mall on Friday

3. That there is still some spectacular wilderness left in Utah

4. Heated bathrooms at campgrounds

5. Cute park rangers that look a little bit like Casey Affleck with a beard.

Friday is when the awesome really starts. Early in the morning Dad and I packed up and headed out to Canyonlands for our annual Thanksgiving weekend camping trip. Can you believe we've indulged this insanity for 11 years! Who in their right mind goes camping in November? Anyway, as we approached Moab we noticed the clouds getting darker and the mesas in the distance were covered with something that we refused to acknowledge as snow. When we stopped in Moab for lunch it was snowing. We decided to keep going anyway- a little snow wasn't going to stop us! We're hearty adventurers (or something like)!

The closer to Canyonlands we got, the deeper the snow.

Not exactly great for camping. Even if the sun came out and melted the snow, and we managed to find someplace clear and not muddy for the tent, hiking around in the sludge would have been less than fun. So we turned around and headed back to the visitor's center in Moab to check on the weather and form a new plan.

We ended up camping in Arches. The problem with Arches is that is has become incredibly popular and touristy over the years. It's still a beautiful park, but it's full of people. We don't like people. In fact, on Friday night the campground was full. We're used to being one of maybe five people at the campground when we venture out on these trips. Anyway, it was still really fun, if a little cold. The sky cleared up a bit just before sunset and the rest of the weekend was sunny and clear and perfect.

Saturday after a chilly breakfast we set out to find a hike away from the multitude of people with cameras. (By the way, nothing is more "fun" in the morning than putting on frozen deodorant) Years and years ago when my dad was down in Arches by himself, he found a route up to the top of the Great Wall. We decided to replicate this little adventure. It's not a real trail so we were pretty sure we wouldn't run into anybody else. We spend the day playing around on top of the plateau- climbing out to the ends of sandstone fins and peering down into slot canyons. The entire time there was no sign whatsoever of other people. No footprints, nothing.

We also came across this very strange set of tracks:

It's not terribly clear in the picture, but there are two parallel lines in a wave pattern. They go on like that for 10-15 feet before disappearing onto sandstone. They almost look mechanical, they're so perfect. There were no footprints anywhere nearby like you would see with a lizard or rodent. It's was like there were two snakes doing some sort of synchronized slithering. When we got down, we asked three different rangers (one of whom was the Casey Affleck look-a-like) what might have made them, and none of them could figure it out. Best guess? Aliens. Red ones. From the comet. With RC cars. (if anyone who reads this has any better guesses please share them!)

After an extremely spectacular moonrise, we went into Moab for dinner. We ate at Poplar Place- the food was ok, the waitress' hair was anachronistic, the heater seemed to be broken. After food, we decided to wander around town a little. We came across a sign that read

Cowboy Poetry

Free 7:00

One block

<====

Eh, why not? So one block late we found ourselves in a little auditorium looking at a microphone, red curtains and a 30 year old amp. There was a pretty good crowd (including Affleck Ranger Guy). The poet was ok. A bit of a ham, but that's what Cowboy Poetry is all about. He was also a little effeminate, which lent a bit of a Brokeback feel to the show. We stayed for about half.

Sunday morning after packing up the car we set out up Courthouse Wash in search of the rather difficult to find Tunnel. We had a general idea of where it was and some basic instructions on how to find it from one of the rangers we talked to on Saturday. Even so, it took about 20 minutes of wandering around the genral area before we spotted the entrance. I have to say it's pretty fucking cool. It is, well, a tunnel. It's about 15 feet long and about 4 feet high, totally naturally made (by water). It's amazing the things that nature comes up with. You probably wont appreciate the coolness unless you actually go there. Just a description doesn't really cut it, neither do the pictures.

Top 5 Really Cool Things I've Seen/Done in Southern Utah

1. Peekaboo/Spooky canyons in Grand Staircase

2. Spring Canyon in Capitol Reef

3. Rappel off the mesa into Park Avenue in Arches

4. The view of Capitol Reef from Devils Backbone (I think that's what it's called)

5. The Tunnel in Arches

And that about covers it. Don't you wish your weekend was as fun as mine? Most people get a bit turned off by the cold, but it's totally negligible next to the awesomeness of everything else we did.

Deadly UV Rays

I love the sun, but the sun does not really love me.

I spent the weekend in Moab with Scott. Yesterday we drove around on a bunch of dirt roads (beautiful scenery). The sunroof was open the whole time. I got a little sunburned.

I have drawn a self-portrait to demostrate the sunburnedness of me:



It's not a very good portrait. I don't have oddly lengthed pointy arms, My eyes are considerably more normal than that, as are my mouth and nose. Let's call it an impressionist portrait. And it does well enough to demostrate that I am a little sunburned.

My skin hurts.

Arches

What an awesome weekend. I went down to Arches National Park with my parents and some of their friends/coworkers. We had the group site at the campground so all 14 persons there had a nice place to pitch their tent. Arches is a lovely place, really - not my favorite park, but lovely. The geography is gorgeous, breathtaking, majestic. Really, if it wasn't so touristy and ... I almost want to say trendy, but that's more just the aura of Moab in which the park basks.

So what we did: After my class on Friday we drove down so we got to the campground around 4:00. After we set up the tent and unpacked some stuff my parents went on a little hike that started somewhere in the campground and went around to a bunch of arches. I heard it was really pretty. I decided to stay around camp and climb some rocks. There was one chimney in particular that I was determined to get up. It was probably too narrow for a sane person, but you know me. My first attempt I got maybe a quarter of the way up and got stuck. The second time I was successful, but it was not easy. This little crack in the rock was maybe a foot wide. That's not much when you're trying to squeeze more than just a skeleton through it. About half way up I rested and held myself in place just by flexing my glutes. In a situaton like that, it's not much good trying to use your legs, because you can't bend them so they're useless, so I basically pulled myself up with my arms. When I couldn't go up anymore I decided that I would go down the other side. It started out wider and therefore easier, but then it went more narrow that my way up. I ended up "walking" my way down above the crack (where it was a bit wider). By walking I mean I had my feet on one rock face and my back on another so I would step with my feet and then push up with my shoulders and upper arms so my back could catch up with my feet. By the time I got back on normal ground, I had worked every muscle in my body- I know because they were all sore the next day.

Yesterday seven of us decided it was a good idea to get up at 5:30 and hike to Delicate Arch for sunset. It was actually quite fun, but you're not going to see me awake that early again for a very long time. After returning to camp and breakfasting, my parents and I decided to hike down Courthouse Wash. Good idea if you want to get away from people (we didn't see a single other hiker the entire way) and are up for an adventure. Bad idea if you want an actual trail (who hikes on trails anyway?) or if you have a problem with quicksand and fighting your way through thick groves of willow and tamarisk. It was not too bad for the first 3/4 of the way, but then it got impossible. We were pushing through thick vegitation and going around in circles. By the end of it we were tired and frustrated. I didn't NOT enjoy it, but I wouldn't exactly say it was fun. Definately an adventure and certainly interesting. The wash itself is very pretty in an atypical way. You don't have the majestic canyon wall hovering several hundred feet over your head (typical Arches scenery). The wash is much more open. It's full of trees and, in a few spots, there were really beautiful waterfalls and neat little swimming holes.

Last night, after we recovered from our adventure, the whole lot of us (14 that is) had dinner at the Moab Brewery. Good beer, good food, good company. Of course beer+hiking all day+ getting up at 5:30 = exhaustion. I was asleep by 11:30 and I have never slept so well on a camping trip.

This morning we packed up, putzed around the windows area of the park and then drove home. One of the best parts of camping is getting home and taking a shower. Those are the best showers ever- after being sweaty and dusty and dirty for days it's so nice to get really clean.

I'll post some pics after they're uploaded from the cameras.

Desserted Weekend

Raise your hand if you think this sounds fun: Sling a 30 lb pack on your back and hike for a few hours, as long as it takes to go a little bit over two miles plus a half hour digression for a wrong turn. After finding a nice overhang to sleep under, walk up a canyon for a bit until it gets dark, look at stars a bit and will the clouds (blocking your view of the cosmos) to go away. Wander back to your overhang, stretch out in a sleeping-bag on the ground and sleep. Wake up a little stiff from a combo of carrying a big pack and sleeping on the hard ground. Try to make tea and realise that the camp stove you brought is totally out of gas. No hot water. Eat a bagel for breakfast and wash it down with some water. Make lunch. Hike for four hours (stopping every now and then to climb a big rock, in the process scrape up your arms and legs - it wouldn't be an adventure if you didn't get a little roughed up right?). Eat lunch. Notice that you've already drunk more than half of the water that you brought with you on your little day hike and that it's that time in the afternoon where there is virtually no shade. Head back to camp. Finish your water on the way. Get back to camp, drink a lot of water and crash. Vow never to move again. After enjoying catatonia for an hour or so, get up and wander around the canyon. Eat dinner - the exact same thing you had for lunch (cheese-in-a-can and salami on totillas, it's not gormet but it packs well and it's light). Wander around the canyon again. Watch the sun set and the stars come out. It's cloudy again. Go back to camp and sleep on the hard ground again. The clouds clear up, but the full moon rises. Full moons are nice but sort of ruin star gazing. The good news is that from where you're sleeping when you wake up in the middle of the night for no real reason, you have a perfect view of the Summer Triangle. Wake up around 6, eat breakfast (totilla with peanut butter. You have dehydrated food but can't make it without hot water. Now you're out of tortillas). Throw stuff back in your pack and hike out to the car.
So, guess how I speant my weekend. Yes, I went backpacking with my Dad. We went back to one of our favorite places for outdoor recreation- Capital Reef- and trekked up Spring Canyon. The first time I camped up in that canyon I was only 5 or 6. It was an amazing time. Yes, we ran out of food and maybe got a little dehydrated on Saturday, but that just made it more fun. There's something exciting about being able to pretend you might be testing your survival skills. Everything about it was beautiful though, it really was. The days were a little warm (in the 90s), the nights were perfect (low 70s high 60s), the canyon was green for the dessert. Bonus: we took my dad's convertable so the drive (4 hrs) down and back was very fantastic and glamorous. And windy. Wicked good time! Pictures:

Tree!

Somehow I had the brilliant idea to climb up a cliff. Ok so it really wasn't very hard but it was pretty high. Dad had the brilliant idea of taking a picture of my ass while I was climbing

This is where we camped. That's me stretched out behind the green things. After hiking 16 miles or so I crashed.

Me on top of a very big rock.

Same rock, different angle.

Canyon in which we camped