Yawohl! Canyons Ho!

**UPDATE: Fixed the apostrophe glitch. Thanks, phone uploading. Conor and I have just finished Angels Landing - pictures will be up on Picasa soon here - so be patient! This afternoon should be relaxing, then we'll head to Vegas tomorrow. Hehe. 

A Quick Update

Last time I wrote, Conor and I were in Denver. There is far, far too much to write to cover it all, and even if I did you all would get intimidated and stop reading at 1000 words anyway. So I will instead provide highlights and interesting observations:

·        Denver morning: Wake up, incredible hospitality by the Matous family continued with eggs for breakfast. Despite my hatred of eggs (see The Great Egg Experiment) they were delicious. We said our goodbyes and headed into the city of Denver to meet Angel Napit and her family for lunch (our trip, unsurprisingly, revolves around food at times). We had delicious Mediterranean food and excellent conversation, then headed for the rather large, square state of Utah.

*The drive over the mountains was SO BIZARRE. We drove from the relative calm of Denver into rain on the mountains. When we got to the pass, it was a full-on blizzard. Then we came down the other side to the arid plains. So weird.

·        We stopped in Grand Junction for gas and also to try and find a place to grab a beer. Conor asked someone where a good place to grab a drink was; the man immediately replied, “Hooters.”

o   I guess he’s got a point.

·        Utah afternoon/night: We stopped in a tiny Utah town to buy food for the night and asked the cashier where we could get a drink. She apologetically said, nowhere. Notice a theme?

·        Camping: We eventually found our campsite for the evening, Fremont Indian State Park. It appeared we were going to be camping on a cliff (not on top of it, literally on the slope) but thankfully, there was an access road that wound us into a little canyon. We made a big fire (yahoo!) and after hanging out for awhile we went to bed.

·        I discovered around 4 am that my sleeping bag has outlived its rating. It is not, contrary to label, rated to zero degrees. It is not, in fact, even rated to 40. I say this because I had to spend most of the night in the fetal position. Once I knew I wasn’t going to freeze, I actually thought it was pretty funny. I was literally curled up in the bottom of my sleeping bag. If anyone remembers Borat, I must have looked like when he managed to put Pamela Anderson in the wedding sack.

o   It better not be that cold tonight, plus I plan on packing my bag with clothes and raincoats like a bird packs its nest with newspaper. It’ll be an experiment.

·        Utah Morning I (today): we woke up around 8, packed up, and headed back on I-70 toward Zion Canyon. We had a moment of nostalgia when 70 ended and turned into 15, considering we’d been on 70 since Pittsburgh. Yes, this was actually a highlight.

·        Zion Canyon: AMAZING. We got here, took a bagillion landscape pictures I’ll have to steal from Conor eventually, and found a campsite around noon. After quickly grabbing groceries, we went on our first hike: Hidden Canyon, a 3.5 hour trek that went up about 850 feet. Call it a baptism by red rock fire, but I was reallllllly out of breath watching Conor the Rock Gremlin scamper his way over yet another seemingly-impossible wall. Conor is a very good, close friend, but the unfortunate fact is that his legs reach about to my shoulders (only a slight exaggeration). Thus, his pace is Usain Bolt to my… whoever the last place guy was. Folks, I was TIRED by the time we got back.

·        And then we went on another hike. No, seriously. It was called Emerald Ponds. It was demonstrably shorter and ended at this crazy rock pond fed by a super-high waterfall. Like I said, I’ll steal pictures from Conor eventually.

·        When we finished Hike Two, we went to eat lunch. We went to sit down under a tree, and I laid down for a second while Conor went to refill water. I don’t remember much else of the last 30 minutes. Conor has a picture of me mouth-breathing while the vultures circle overhead, trying to decide if I’m dead.

·        We saw bighorn sheep. This is apparently a huge deal. Conor tried to explain to me why, but I was more interested in how a ranger could be like 120 pounds overweight. Again, small differences between us.

Random observation from Zion so far: there seem to be three populations of people here hiking around: a) old white people, b) young adult German people, and c) young families. We pondered the implications of this for awhile but were unable to draw any conclusions. Thoughts, anyone?

I promise more to come. I will update when I can – service is pretty sporadic!

Tomorrow we are hiking Angel’s Landing. Google it. It’s terrifying and a five hour hike. I promised someone I’d make it out alive; maybe I’ll get some good pictures out of it as well.

Happy trails to us,

Nate