Last weekend Jason and I both happened to have three days off so we decided to make the trek down south to see Arches and two districts of Canyonlands NP. The weather was perfect, 80 degrees, sunny and clear blue skies. It was the first camping trip and sunburn of the season! We camped along the Colorado River on highway 128, primitive camp sites for 8 dollars a night!!! That is how much camping should cost, I can’t remember the last time I paid that little for a campsite. There weren’t any showers but they had pit toilets and we were only there for two nights so we could do without showers.
I had worked the night before and had thought that I could sleep in the car on the way down but the excitement kept me awake. We set up camp and then took a drive through Arches which was only 1 mile or so from our campsite. We hiked part of the Devil’s Garden trail it was perfect no one was there except us…
This is what 30 hours without sleep looks like when you are in a National Park, not bad! My feet were dragging but it was worth it!
I can imagine that this place is a zoo in the summer, luckily we had the place pretty much to ourselves on our first day but it filled up on Saturday. The next day we drove about 40 miles to the Needles district of Canyonlands NP. It was pretty excellent, I think not very many people must visit this park because again we had the place to ourselves despite Arches being totally flooded with cars. We saw some petroglyphs!
Some of the glyphs date back to pre-columbian times but as you can see the “wheel” was most likely done during the time of the pioneers. Either way it was pretty cool, I love the little goat glyphs. We drove back through Arches on the way home and caught a glimpse of Delicate Arch, the parking lot for the hike up to the Arch was full, ugh, so we went to the other parking lot for the viewpoint…
So we are going to have to go back for a more close up picture perhaps even earlier in the season to avoid the crowds. We also hit up the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands to see Mesa Arch. I think this was probably the most impressive view/arch that we saw and again we were one of two cars in the parking lot which made it even more excellent…
and another view from under Mesa Arch…
We had a nice sunset here, the sun was behind us and the last rays of the day were shining on the distant rocks…
and another…
It was a perfect mini trip to get us psyched for summer. We crossed off two more NP’s now we just need to hit up Zion and the other two districts of Canyonlands. We also are planning on going back to Capitol Reef to do some backpacking/mountain biking, yea for living so close to cool places!
We also had a fun time exploring the SLC night scene which included a sad and hilarious attempt at “bar hopping” we ended our evening by performing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” at a Karaoke bar, it is pretty safe to say we were the only ones with talent, immediately after our performance despite the entire bar’s pleads for us to stay and give an encore, we left the building. Here is a picture of Lindsay from that night…
After Lindsay left Steph came into town for Thanksgiving! We had a good time as well, one of the absolute highlights of her trip was when we managed to come across 7 Newfoundlands at a very posh pet store in Park City, the owner of the dogs (and the store) must have sensed my love for them (I did tell him at least three times “I love them”) and gave us 2 Newfie’s for us to walk around Park City!!! I was beyond excited, in fact I am still worked up about it, made my month!
Oh Yeah we were pretty serious about it, our very own little Whoville! Steph and I also cooked a turkey and did the whole Thanksgiving feast (mini style since it was just Jas, Steph and myself). The turkey turned out amazing, although I have to say that while Lindsay was here she and I cooked a full turkey breast in preparation for my first bird and it was by no means an easy task, in fact it was a disaster. Luckily the second bird turned out and was just wonderful, all credit going to Steph since I had to work the night before Thanksgiving when she did most of the work making the brine and everything else. This picture is blurry but check that bird out!
That is a tarantula! My first wild tarantula! I was really excited and so happy that I decided to bring my camera with me last minute.
It is official now, I live in the desert.
Here is a picture that gives a better perspective as to how tiny she actually is…
So cute, they also had three baby tigers, a monkey and a giraffe, Kelsey got some good pictures that you can see on her blog 
You can see the cute little chairs they had carved out of stumps and the plants were trained to grow over the wire fencing which provided the structure for the playhouse, it was so nice and cool inside because of the plants perfect for hiding out on a hot summer day! They had a large tunnel trellis that was shaped like a snake, you entered through his mouth and then you could wind through his whole body like a maze, here is a picture of the inside of the snakes belly…
We ended our day by driving down into Heber City on the other side of the Canyon and then swinging past Utah’s Bridal Veil falls, it was impressive but my goodness were there a lot of people standing at the base of the falls sort of like going to Multnomah falls but worse because here people were splashing around in the water, sort of takes away from the beauty.
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It was a nice little hike although it will probably be even better in early fall once all the kids go back to school. Then we went over to Snowbird and took a ride on the tram which takes you up to the top of Hidden Peak which is 11,000 feet! It was sort of scary but awesome at the same time here is a picture of Dan filming our ascent…
Our chariot…
How freaking beautiful is that?! I was so excited to see all the lush greenery along the way and the wildflowers were spectacular, at the very top of the peak we were 10, 242 feet, Mt. Hood is 11, 249! It was a really strenuous hike but so worth it, here is Jas at the top enjoying the view and practicing good skin cancer protection…
Getting down was way worse than going up, I will take a strenuous climb over skating down the side of a mountain any day. It was a good way for Jas to celebrate his last 30 hour shift…at least for three 1/2 weeks that is and then he will be back to the 30 hour death marches. 
Oh yes there are a lot of herbs indeed and see those lawn chaises in the background?! Our landlords (we shall call them the Preacher’s for privacy sake) gave us those for free! They are about 50 years old I think but they have been kept in storage and they are in perfect condition they need new cushions though because the ones that they came with are sort of covered in mildew but for now I think throwing a towel over them will do just great. I need to work on getting the patio area set-up. The Preacher’s are funny landlords, sort of nosy at times but I think they actually really like us. Last Saturday they were over in the morning measuring the garden beds so that they could buy us some soaker hoses, this was very nice of them but since I was not expecting anyone to be over that early I had the side door open and was still in my pajamas. When I heard someone call my name I thought it was Jason trying to be funny and talking with an old lady voice but it was just Patty Preacher wanting me to go outside and help them hold the measuring tape. Luckily we have not had to water too much since we had a huge downpour on Sunday which resulted in this…
Later that evening it turned into this…
Jason took a much better picture of the event which you can see on his blog
Sad, is it not? Anyway, that is what is going on here guess I should get moving before it heats up.