arches spring break

I am alive! A tad sunburned and sore, but alive!!

Much has transpired the last week or so since my last post. I just woke up from a deep sleep Sunday after church nap. It was AMAZING!

I've been on Spring Break since Thursday. It has been a much needed change of scenery, so to speak. My super mom and I drove down to Moab for a few days to bask in the sun and hike our guts out. For the most part, both of those things were accomplished and we both had a great time. I tried calculating a total of miles we hiked and I would guesstimate around 7 or 8 miles within two days and, oh, about 5 different hikes. Ben told me before I left, "Remember, a picture without people is just a postcard." I suppose the majority of my 88 pictures, then, would be considered postcards, so I'll try to show the non-postcardesqe pictures I have.


Our first hike, called Park Avenue, led us to this interesting feature in the background. The name of it escapes me, but as you might be able to see, the sky was a little overcast and it was a tad chilly.















After hiking through Park Avenue, we hiked to Tunnel Arch
and Pinetree arch, pictured below. This was a darling little
arch with pine trees growing in the middle of it. There was a
family with lots of young kids. The kids were yelling and screaming so the mom told them "If you continue to yell and scream the rock will fall on you!" It was funny.



We hiked to Landscape Arch just before it started to rain and snow a little. Landscape Arch is interesting because in 1991 part of it collapsed and now it is very, very thin in several places. Visitors are no longer allowed to hike up to it but you can get pretty close from the viewpoints. I think this was our favorite arch.
At about 8:30 the next morning, we hiked up to The Window's...two arches close together that look like windows. It was SO cold, but worth it to see the sun coming up over the red rocks.
Then we hiked to Delicate Arch, the famous one on Utah
license plates.
It was a great time of day, not too hot,
and when we got there,
we spent about an hour 'sunning'
and reading.










I climbed around the back of Delicate Arch to get this picture, which I love. It's kind of the opposite side of what you normally see and I thought it was neat.



Our next hike was one we had to sign up for and go with a ranger. It was called The Fiery Furnace and basically we were climbing through slot canyon after slot canyon, boulder jumping. It was thrilling and most of the pictures I took of the hike are really just postcards, so I'll just post a few on here of us on the hike and then I'll post the rest of my pictures on my Picasa Page

There are over 300 identified arches in Arches national park. This is not one of them, but it is still a neat feature. You can kid of see the shadow of the hole just over my shoulder.


After listening to our ranger guide for almost 2 hours, we were both kind of tired. We stoped here, at Skull Arch (below) and took a picture of ourselves not really paying attention to the guy talking.


This is skull arch. See the skull??


See the slot in the rock behind me? Yeah, we hiked through that.

We came back Saturday afternoon. I didn't want to come back because I knew by coming back I would have to face reality and write a 6 page paper for school. I spent the remainder of Saturday working on that paper, which had to be in APA format (which I hate!). Ben and I went to church this morning and we are going to my grandmas for a big family Easter dinner here in another hour or so.

My fun news for work is that next week I will be participating in our spirit assembly: I will be dressing up as a rock star and engaging in a Guitar Hero battle with a student. I've been practicing my song (Hit Me With Your Best Shot) and hope to impress my students with my mad guitar skillz. I will be sure to get some picture and a video of me up on stage.

Happy Easter!