I was putting off writing about April because we did so many things. For my very last spring break at Fresno State, I went to Utah by myself to hang out my sister who was going to school at Southern Utah University in Cedar City. I drove there on Friday (and got stuck in random traffic jams in the middle of the desert) and we went traveling on Saturday morning.
We started in Zions National Park that is right next door to Cedar City. We hiked to the Weeping Wall and hiked to a waterfall coming off a rock.
There is a tunnel that separates the two sides of Zions. One side has red rock and the other has grey. This is a picture of the east side. The mesa in the background is called checkerboard mesa because of the cool grooves in the rock.
That afternoon we drove by Lake Powell and through Monument Valley. The white spots in the picture above are Native American trailers and houses. They were right up on the base of the rocks. It kind of cheapened the view. That night we slept in a little campground with four other groups. When we were about to go to bed, Katie locked the car and then shouted. She had locked the keys in the car. We had to ask the neighboring campers, and the camp host to help us get the car unlocked. It took about forty minutes.
The next day we drove to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. I had never been there and loved it. The windows and doors were so small. I could not believe how small they were.
That night we drove to Arches National Park and hiked to the viewpoint for the Delicate Arch which is on the Utah license plate. Notice the wind? Katie and I camped in one of the only remained campsites, because the Moab rock crawler weekend was happening. It snowed that night and poor Katie almost froze. I had to keep knocking snow off the tent.
After it snowed for an hour and a half, it rained for another hour and melted all of the snow. We thought we wouldn't be able to do any hiking, but we got to everything. The above picture is the Landscape Arch.
Here is Katie scrambling up the trail. It was so windy while we were hiking. We were adopted by a nice couple from Alberta who took pictures of Katie and I at the cool arches. We had to cross a rock dragons back that was eight feet wide and twenty feet down on both sides. It was blowing 40 miles and hour.
This is the last arch we went to. We drove back to Katie's apartment after this because we were both tired. I left Utah two days later after walking around her campus and eating vintage ice cream sodas from a soda jerk.
The day after I got home, we met the other part of my family at Big Bend State Park by the coast. We went on a ten mile hike with them.
We saw lots of banana slugs.
My mom was not able to make the whole hike, but here are those who did. Left to Right: Fabian (the German exchange student Luke was exchanging with), Jonas (the year long German exchange student), me, my dad, and my brother Luke. Chase is taking the picture.
That night, my parents went to a hotel and left us with the boys. Chase played a climbing game with them with the giant fallen redwood across from our camp, and he played monopoly with them. While playing monopoly, a raccoon stole trail mix out of Fabian's open backpack and ran up a tree.
Two weeks after the hiking fun, it snowed in the mountains. We took advantage of the snow and went for one last cross country ski jaunt. The dog loved it.
Chuck and Sam snow shoed.
One of the lakes behind the Miller's house
One of the trees shedding the snow after the storm.
May is next and it won't be as long, I promise.
