Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Groundhog Day!

The last two days - best of my life. Not. I have had an interesting time here, but you can't really enjoy something that you don't really want. Maybe in the future. I'm being a little over-dramatic. I'm not at work. I'm camping and eating junk food. So, it could be worse.

Yesterday was a pretty cool day. I drove about four hours to Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. It was pretty much a toss up between sitting at the KOA and the insane-drive-for-one-day. All in all, glad I went. Super pretty scenery - red rock cliffs, eroding rock/sandstone that leaves pretty cool arches, petrified dunes (when I got back, I had to look up what petrified meant. "turned to rock" for future reference). Also super scary. So, I got to the visitor center only to find that the way into the park is up some crazy steep side of mountain road. Now, I'm an okay driver, but when you want to take photographs WHILE you are driving, it is a little bit more difficult to navigate oncoming traffic and steep mountain cliffs. But one takes surprisingly good pictures when randomly holding a camera, not looking where it's pointed, and clicking. I was quite shocked.

Back to the super scary parts... one of the things that I definitely wanted to see was Delicate Arch - the iconic symbol of Utah. So I headed for the viewpoint only to find that you had to go on a hike. Totally cool, except for the fact that I had on flip-flops and jeans - not a great combination for a sandy incline with rock half-steps strewn throughout. I stopped halfway through when I saw that the sandy incline turned into large rock boulders that you just climb on. Shocking, I know. So, I snapped my picture from a less-than desirable vantage point and headed back down the trail. Then...a sandstorm erupted in the middle of my trek. I stopped near a boulder and literally had to hold on while sand blew across the mountain. WTF!! I almost blew off of whatever mountains these were!

Second super scary part. I got back in the car and started to head to the rest of the must-sees in the park. Quick note, the whole way through the park, there were signs that said "watch out for flash-floods." That being said - it started to rain. It wasn't a down pour, but I was just imagining me in my yellow rental car being swept away by a flash-flood. Talk about things getting worse. Nonetheless, I am still alive. I left the park a little earlier than planned and headed back to town.

I don't have any really exciting stories for today. I toured downtown SLC. I probably could have been converted to Mormonism if I would have let the visitor center people. I also could have had a few more passengers if I would have really read those signs (there is a good number of homeless people).

Well, here I sit, at the KOA trying to decide how to spend the remaining three hours of daylight. Wait, Nicole's hosting Wii games at the pavilion? I think I just decided.

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