All Who Wander are Not Lost...

Do you know how tricky it is to find a good heading for a multi-faceted blog? There are so many crafty little sayings to choose from and after all, isn't it supposed to give the reader a sense of direction? Well, in my case, I really am wandering but I'm pretty sure I'm not lost, at least not right now. (By the way, this title came from a "Life is Good" shirt I found at the Bryce Canyon general store that I just had to have.) I have decided that a nifty little gadget called a GPS would have been something handy to have packed but maybe we weren't supposed to find what we were looking for after all. And as Amy pointed out, maybe that was God's way of protecting us, as irritating as it was.

The last time I wrote anything of not-so-real consequence was when I was at Julie's in Denver, which as crazy as it may seem was over a week ago. Although there are lots of stories to tell, as in all adventures, I'm going to focus on my most recent ones and skip through others. If I told you everything, then that would mean that I'd have to include some 1,000 pictures and 50 plus videos taken this week alone. That's right folks! It's a good thing digital cameras were invented or this would be the end of my trip...I wouldn't be able to afford the film.

For those of you who haven't been to Vegas, and yes, I KNOW there is at least one of you out there. It really is a neat place to visit. I'm not a big gambler but I sure do love to people watch and I LOVE to dance. So, that's what I chose to do. After eating a wonderful dinner with some of Ben and Angelique's friends from Arizona, we took off to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for "The Perfect Margarita". I think Kent really liked it but I thought it had to be more like drinking kerosene. Holy heck! Every sip was like taking a shot. Fortunately, Kent offered to drink mine as well and I was much happier with my substitute, a strawberry margarita. After that, it was off to see the Dueling Pianos at Harrah's. That was pretty entertaining but after sitting down for a bit, Ang and I were ancy to get on the dance floor. I'm just going to say that I had a wonderful time and I do know first hand that not everything in Vegas stays open 24 hours. I made it home safely obviously, and no, I didn't hitchhike...that's later.

Oh! I almost forgot. We also went to Red Rock Canyon near Vegas. It really is beautiful and even though all of us had been to Vegas before, none of us had ever been there. A perfect place for a peaceful drive, as long as you don't have Mario Andrette behind the wheel. Now, I feel the need for speed every once in awhile but Ben takes the cake. I almost felt a little bad asking him to stop every 300 yards so I could take a picture but I also knew that would be the only way to get him to slow down. Just kidding, Ben!

Red Rock really is worth visiting, I would compare it more to the rock structures at the Grand Canyon, although it's not really a canyon. After seeing pictures of Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park it will be easy to see why I nearly missed telling you about it. They do have 19 trails there and we did make it on 2 of them, leaving the car at 2:00 pm in the hot sun. The temperature that day was 108 degrees. Flaming hot, especially when not in the shade. Not that I'm going to make a big deal about it at all but we did have one slight mishap on this adventure. We took great care before leaving our room to make sure we had plenty of ice cold water in my camelbak. You can imagine our surprise when we opened up the trunk to find the carpet very cool, as if it had recently been given a bath. We did have enough water to last us for our 3 hour hike though. I can't tell you how glad Ben and I were that we weren't the ones who put the lid on the pack.

Sunday was more of a travel day as we picked up Amy from the airport and headed to St. George, Utah, which has been our "home" for the past week. It's not a huge town but it is full of traffic circles, which I'm sure can confuse even the best drivers, not that that includes Ben. Needless to say, everyone in the car has to be paying attention when he's driving. I've also got it imprinted in my brain that Vegas is south and Zion is north. It's important for any backseat driver to pay attention to details I've found.

On Monday, we drove to Zion and hiked a portion of the Weeping Rock Trail and I'm sure took Hidden Canyon Trail up to the point of no return. There, we practiced our rappelling techniques, and got our bodies used to hiking in the heat of the day. We did have a good time, practicing 20 - 30 foot rappels until everyone in the group felt comfortable. That night, Robert, a friend of Ben's from work, made it in for three days of deliriously amazing canyoneering.

We started out fairly early on Tuesday and headed to Birch Canyon which has a 3B IV canyon rating, which means if you don't know what you're doing, stay out. According to the printed material we were going off of, it's 10 miles and takes about 12 hours. This is backcountry canyoneering but there have been several people who have gone through these canyons making notes and notating GPS coordinates. They also tell you what type of equipment you will need, different hazards, describe each rappel in detail, and tell you how and where to exit the canyon...it's kind of like a canyoneering for dummies book. I've got tons of pictures and videos and if you're interested let me know and I'll send you some. It's a pain to put pictures in a blog (I'm going to try a video or two on this one) so I'll have to figure out a better way to do it.

Birch Canyon has a total of 10 rappels and is one of Zion's many slot canyons. The only way to get down is by technical canyoneering. By definition, a canyoneer is "someone who hikes in canyons" but a technical canyoneer is one who "travels through canyons using technical rock-climbing techniques such as rappelling, belaying, and ascending or descending rock walls using rock climbing equipment and one who may also negotiate stretches of moving water by swimming or using floatation devices." That's me, I'm a technical canyoneer. Yahoo!

What is absolutely amazing about canyoneering is that the longer the rappel, the easier the start seems to be. We took some pretty wild photos of us looking like contortionists on 15 foot rappels and looking like professionals on 75 foot rappels. Downclimbing is another technique that we have worked on perfecting over the past several days. I've decided that as long as you don't think about "that rock fell from somewhere to get here for me to be able to climb on it" then you'll be fine. Otherwise, you're going to be overtaken by the fear that a rock the size of a bus could drop on your head at any moment, which is the real reality. The longest rappel on Birch is a 100 foot rappel from a tree anchor at the top of a bowl. There were also several 30 - 50 foot rappels. The ninth rappel is a 65 foot rappel that ends in a bowl. The instructions we printed off say..."Look up to view a large round boulder wedged in the tight canyon above and the light filtered through the twisted, sculpted rock. (See picture for proof that they were right on with this one.)

Ben said at one point while arguing with Amy about resetting the trip meter on the way to the trailhead, "I'm okay with the directions being as specific as they can". We could have used some more specific descriptions on Wednesday as we tried for almost four hours in the hot sun to locate the trailhead for Mystery Canyon. It's amazing the things that are obvious to you in hindsight. (More on Mystery Canyon and Pine Creek Canyon in a later blog, promise.)

For now, I'm going to leave you with a few funny clips (it makes me laugh at least) of me hiking up The Narrows, which is one of the most famous places at Zion. I went off on my own for a little while...I just couldn't resist; it was so pretty. I finally passed a group of kids headed back towards where Ang and Amy were waiting for me.

This was my message: "Can you please pass a message along for me? There are two girls waiting for me and I'm sure they're worried. One is in pink shorts and the other is in a blue shirt. Please tell them that I'm alive and I'm okay. And that I'll be 10 minutes behind you all, I can't be gone that long, they'd kill me." (This was what I decided I better do after they told me it was another 30 minutes just to get to the postcard views of The Narrows that I'd been seeing everywhere.)

This is the message that Ang and Amy got: "Hey ladies! We passed your friend and she's okay. She's headed upstream. She'll be about an hour before she gets back."

Amy & Angeliques' reaction to the message: "That wanker! How could she do that? And ladies??? We're not ladies! We're girls! That's it, we're outta here!"

What just happened: Message was LOST IN TRANSLATION!!! Am I EVER glad I didn't go much further!

After these are in, I'm headed to the pool. I've got some wicked tan lines from my camelbak and it's 12:30 pm and prime sunning time. I'm sure you understand...