Utah Reprise

Mom and Dad came out to visit us over Memorial Weekend and we took them to Utah. Why? Because it had been over a month since we'd been there, and Joe was going through withdrawals, and because it seems to be the thing to do when you have visitors (we took Joe's parents there at the beginning of April).

This trip we visited Joe's field area, which I hadn't been to yet. It was fun to finally be able to see the place Joe had described from miles and miles away when I was still back in Duluth and he was out there working on his thesis. Now I can understand why he wasn't always in the most cheerful mood when he said he had to ride his bike to the top of Blue Notch canyon in order to call me on his cell phone.

Blue Notch canyon was our second stop; we also visited the San Rafael Swell. That's where the picture of my mom and I hiking down the narrow canyon was taken. Yes, that's my mom. Impressive, eh?! There's also a picture of Dad in a second little canyon in the Swell. Mom and I let the boys go on a hike by themselves.

We bought a new tent for the occasion--the REI half dome. It was on sale for a great price a few weeks ago, and we'd been looking for a better summer tent anyway. It's a good tent, and I suppose it's a great tent for the price, but let everyone be forewarned: this is not a Utah tent. There are no zippered screen covering things on the tent--just screens and then the fly. This makes for great circulation and a far less stinky tent once Joe and his socks are inside, but as it turns out, the fine red Utah sands get in just as easily as Joe's sock stink gets out. The second night the wind was really blowing, and it blew all the fine sand up under the fly, and deposited in an ever increasing layer on top of us and our sleeping bags. At one point Joe rolled over and put his arm around me, only to draw it back again and mumble "You're gritty." I even had sand between my toes, which had remained inside my sleeping bag the entire night. While my eyes and nose were slowly filling up with sand and I couldn't sleep because of the howling wind and flapping tent, I was imagining the scathing report I'd write about the tent on this blog. I've calmed down since then, but you can see the picture that visually represents how I felt about the tent in the morning.

In the very last picture, you can just see our campsite at the edge of the sunlight in the bottom of the picture. Joe, Dad and I hiked to the ledge above our campsite and took this picture.