Just over a month ago I posted a huge list of places
Chris and I were planning to go on our three and a half week, anniversary camping trip out west. While we did manage to stick to the plan most of the time, some places proved to be too
buggy or
closed due to construction. I promised to tell you if anything exciting happened and since
a few exciting things did happen I thought I'd fulfill my promise with a list.
- While camping in Badlands National Park a lone buffalo wandered through our campsite. I was in the middle of cooking up Buffalo steaks at the moment and the irony did not escape us.
- While traveling through the Bighorn Mountains and admiring the several feet of snow that capped it we ran smack into a snowdrift. We were about 200 feet from the road, which only 6 cars drove by on, and we spent a good 20 hours there while it continued to snow. The next day Chris bundled up and headed out into blizzard-like weather in search of help. Eventually we were rescued.
- While in Yellowstone National Park I got within 15 feet of a herd of buffalo and their calves. Now, before you start calling me stupid and wreckless, they were on either side of a pullout and I very safely stayed next to parked vehicles as I inch by inch approached and snapped away with the camera. Chris says he was afraid for my life but I didn't feel unsafe and the animals barely looked at me.
- Also while in Yellowstone I got within 4 or 5 feet of a Grizzly Bear. This time from the relative safety of our vehicle. I'm not a total asshat.
- Our first day in Arches National Park began with a 3 mile hike in the desert. I'll be the first to admit I'm not in prime physical condition, but we'd been hiking for at least a week by then and I was able to do 3 miles pretty well. Of course, the hot desert sun and my lack of head coverage along with the "gentle slope" of slickrock we had to clambor over worked against me and I made it almost to our turn around point when I collapsed with heat exhaustion. Luckily Chris had a gallon of water and we'd been drinking from it constantly or I'd have collapsed a lot sooner. I like to call this our Desert Death Hike.
- To counter the moisture sucking heat of the previous day we opted to go on an all day white water trip on the Colorado River. I was looking forward to the water more than the rapids, we were only going to be hitting level 3 rapids and I've been on level 5s before so didn't expect to be challenged. Then we decided to ditch the chatty kathy's on the raft and switched to a kayak for the last half of the day. Wohoo..level 3 in a kayak was exhilarating!
- In our meandering through the ancestral puebloan sites of the southwest we went to Yucca House National Monument where we spent a good hour looking at hills with brick-shaped stone littering them. Sometimes I think we'd both be happy to be archaeologists.
- We ended our trip by stopping in St. Louis and staying with Laggedyanne and sessor. They kindly lent us their floor, their shower and their apartment complex swimming pool. Bless them.
There are a mega-fuckton of photos on our two
flickr accounts. I'm still uploading mine but I'm up to June 3 finally - only 5 or so days left! You can find them by searching for cbustapeck or guaharibo in the flickr people finder.