Anyway, lots has happened since I last wrote, as you might imagine. I'll start with recent things and work backward as best I can. I'll have to make a second entry with more pictures because this one already has a lot. First is a picture of a lizard hanging on the wall outside from a few months ago. This was maybe 6-7 inches long and is one of the biggest we've seen. They like to hang around the front porch and sun themselves and do this funny bobbing-up-and-down dance, though we haven't seen them around much in the past few weeks.
You may remember that I had some back pain after our last camping trip, when I slept on an air mattress, so B and I set up the tent inside the house so I could do a test run with a foam mattress B had from his rolfing days. After setting it up, both cats got inside to have a look around. Here's Spice making herself comfortable.
The foam mattress worked out just fine for me, so we did do some camping on our trip to Arches National Park Oct. 5 through Oct. 10. On our way there, we went through Monument Valley. Here's a picture of our approach from the south.
This is how it looked when we actually got there.
It was a little windy there that day, as it was when we came back through on our way home.
We stayed in the Monument Valley area on Sunday night, Oct. 5, and it was pretty cold there that night, so we decided to stay in a hotel rather than camp. There was a place there called the Weatherill Inn where B had stayed years ago, so that's where we stayed. They had a gift shop there where B had seen a pen knife that he'd always regretted not getting, so of course we went to the gift shop to see if they still had it or something like it. They didn't have the exact one, but they had lots of nice looking pen knives, among other things, but B still didn't get one because he felt they were too expensive (and I agreed). He did get a very nice mug and T-shirt and I got a few things for myself.
This next picture is on our way to Arches and approaching the La Sal Mountains, which are very close to the Utah/Colorado border and are visible from Arches. This picture doesn't really do them justice because they were huge and pretty spectacular looking.
This next picture is driving into Arches National Park. You may notice that we're on the wrong side of the road. That's because they had just put down a layer of oil or tar or something on the other side and we were being led up this steep cliff into the park by a park vehicle. We initially had to wait about 10 minutes to go in because they were leading people down the one open lane from the other direction first.
That was on Monday, Oct. 6 that we arrived in Arches around lunch time. B found a nice spot near Balanced Rock where we set up our gas stove and made lunch. This picture is driving further into the park.
After lunch, we decided to hike up to Delicate Arch, below. This was a butt-kicking hike. I was somewhat prepared for this, having been doing squatts and lunges at home for weeks beforehand, but what was really sore afterwards were my shins. Here is B standing under Delicate Arch. You can see the La Sal Mountains in the background on the left.
You probably can't see just how steep this was from the picture, but that's me going back down, and that's where my shins got so sore. You can see the road we took to get there snaking downhill in the background and other people doing the hike on the right.
That night we decided we weren't quite ready to rough it yet, so we stayed in a hotel again. In fact, we were already so tired and sore from hiking to Delicate Arch, we decided to get a really nice room with a jacuzzi tub and we both soaked in the tub for a while that night, which I think probably helped a lot with our soreness the next day (though I was sore to varrying degress the rest of the week anyhow).That's it for now, but I'll write again about the rest of the trip and include more pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment