Fitness

You may think that after all this hiking and nature and exercise, I would be getting in pretty good shape.

You'd be pretty wrong. This is what I look like after climbing a small mountain (more like a hill):


I hate you, lily, for taking this picture.

Miles: 2,900
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Location:E Center St,Cedar City,United States

Dirty

Well we made it to Bryce Canyon National Park, and you know what? We are FILTHY. haven't showered in four days. Have hiked and gotten super sweaty every day. Swam in a lake. Here look - this is a splash of mud that has been on my leg for literally three days:


We've* pretty much stopped changing clothes too. This evening, we even took pictures of each other's awesome gross hair. We are both developing dreds. Dreads? Hm.






*I use we there as the royal we - lily changes her clothes often, it's just me who doesn't. Heh.
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Location:N Camp Ground Rd,Tropic,United States

Neck Spring Trail

Sniff. We had to pack up our campsite today to hit the road again. We've really grown attached to our lil primitive site on the river these last two nights.

Anyway, onwards, to Canyonlands National Park! The great thing about the Utah NPs is that their names tell you everything you need to know about them. Guess what Arches NP has a lot of?

Yup:


And canyonlands has a lot of these:


Nailed it, God. (that's one of our inside jokes from the trip. Other things God has nailed include panda bears, the Rocky Mountains, and the Simon & Garfunkel song "Bridge Over Troubled Water," but He dropped the ball on polar bears).

Anyway. Good hike! Maybe the nest yet! About 6 miles of solitary desert hiking first through a canyon:


And then up along a ridge:


Good views, and that takes us through our third National Park of the trip, and third day of camping, and, most importantly, fourth day of not showering.

Miles: 2,500
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Location:BRYCE,United States

Hydration

After completing our first desert hike, we sure were thirsty - so we went to hydrate with some margaritas at a Mexican joint.


We continued our hydration tour with a stop off at the Moab Brewery - at which point there was a tsunami for about 20 minutes, which was odd, because we had just discussed how if it ever rained in the desert, it would probably be front page news (it is very dry there).

We returned to our campsite on re Colorado river with Moab Giant-Jug-of-Beer in tow.


We then broke park rules and took a dip in the Colorado. This was very refreshing and definitely made us much cleaner, if you define clean as "covered in mud." And we spent the rest of the day sunbathing, reading, drinking, and campfiring.

Not bad, us.


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Location:BRYCE,United States

Devil's Garden

One of my fave hikes in the US of A is called Devil's Garden in Arches National Park. 7.2 miles, 4 miles of which are classified as "primitive," with 7 major arches along the way, like:


We murderized this hike in about 3 hours - and we somehow drank less than a liter total (out of three liters). I don't honestly have much to say about it now that I think back on the hike. It was good. I had some dried fruit. Lily declared that she loves desert scenery. No mountain lions attacked us.

Here are some highlights:


Lily loves clouds.


That's me! My beard is unimpressive. Lily told me that it was "dense, populous, even, thick, and copious." She was really tired.


Scenery. Nice.


I love this sign for obvious reasons.

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Location:BRYCE,United States

Camping on the Colorado River

Last night was an adventure.

Actually, let me preface that by saying this: Lily is a natural camper. In fact, I think I am literally watching her devolve from civilized member of society to cavewoman right before my eyes. For one, she keeps commenting on how long it's been since she's showered with a strange sense of pride in her voice. But even more importantly, she gets super psyched when the only campsite we can find is "primitive," and lacking in water and electricity. All I can say is, good job, Lydia, and keep it up.

Anyway. We arrived in Arches National Park to discover that all the campsites in the park were full (this was unsurprising - it was already 7pm). We proceeded to get some more campfire food/supplies and drive up the east bank of the Colorado River until we found our primitive spot. It is - legit - gorgeous. Check it out:


That's taken this morning immediately following me exiting the tent.

Anyway, despite the site's aesthetic bona fides, some problems cropped up. First, I failed at making a fire. This was mostly because we didn't have enough kindling or small wood for me to get one going, but I'm still ashamed about it. Second, and more importantly...well, let's just say lily and I consumed lots of beverages until, when it wad pitch black outside, we realized that our tent was about to blow into the Colorado River. It was really windy! Here's basically how it looked AFTER we repaired it, so imagine how bad it was before:


Double-fail. The best part of this story is when we noticed the tent was about to become airborne, we ran over to it to secure it, and I exclaimed, "WE NEED TO TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY!!!" Lily then shined her flashlight in my face to expose me chugging a beer. Apparently, that was my idea of action. Anyway, we managed to both secure and sleep in the tent and everything turned out swimmingly. See? Happy in the morning.


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Location:N Main St,Moab,United States

On the road again

We departed RMNP. It was grand. Originally, we planned to spend the day taking scenic tours of Colorado, but after a midday picnic and some tumultuous thunderstorms, decided it would be better to just head straight to Utah, land of a thousand Mormons or something. That meant that within a span of a about three hours, we went from landscapes that looked like this:


to this:


We both like Utah a lot. It's red.

Miles: 2,300
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Location:Unnamed Rd,Moab,United States