I don't even know what's going on right now

So Kris and I just got back from BLM land north of Moab, UT. We were staying in a campground there with our good friend Mike Morin. More on that later. Basically we haven't had internet or cell phone coverage for days now. It's Easter as I write this and I'm sitting in the laundery room of a campground so I can be warm, have internet and charge our electrical gadgets. Talk about a non-traditional holiday!

So I left off in Canyonlands last time. At this point it's been days since that happened so it's now exactly fresh in my mind. We got up that morning and got out of the site early. We hiked a mile and a half up to a lookout of another part of the canyon. It was warm, dry and sunny. Typical southern Utah day around here. We chilled out near the trail for around an hour while Kristen made rock art and I slept on the slickrock.

After this we got back to the van and started the long drive out of the park and back onto I70 to Moab. We stopped along the way and got some pics in Canyonlands but it was a pretty lazy day overall. When we got into Moab we stopped at a few places in town to look into rafting/canoeing in the area and hit the grocery store. We spent that night in the same campground that I'm in currently. The most eventful part of the night was moving our campsite due to the proximity of screaming children... Actually that's not true. Kris and I (using Ben's recipe) made our first batch of green curry. What a success! A new meal for the road and it was so good that I may add it into the guide menu this summer.

That night was a windy one so there were branches down all over in the campground. We ate breakfast and went over our plan for the day. Our friend Mike Morin would be coming into town on friday afternoon. We had to find a campsite a little further from town that would be more suitable for our ranger friend. The problem is that due to the 45th annual Jeep festival town was a madhouse and all the campgrounds were full. We new that BLM (Bureau of Land Management) campsites are all first come first serve. So we decided that we would leave in the morning and drive to the BLM site we had in mind. We would then stalk the site until we had found one open.

Upon arriving at the Big Bend site we noticed that every lot was full of campers. People were everywhere. Jeeps being pulled by trucks were lining the dirt roads. We had little hope that we would find an empty site anywhere. After driving the loop twice we noticed a sign that pointed the way to sites 1 through 5. As we slowly drove down the road we noticed a family coming out of site #2 and packing things into their truck. We also noticed there was no little yellow slip of paper on the site marker, score!

We had found our site. Located right along the river with huge sandstone cliffs all around us. The trees were perfectly space so that it was very open in the site but was totally private. We couldn't hear another camper from our picnic table. What a treat! After we signed in we decided it would be best to get into Arches National Park and see what we could in the ramainder of the day. We spoke with the ranger, who was nice, knowledgeable and respectful, and she pointed us to a handful of trails that would keep us busy for the next two days.

We hiked a great loop right off the bat. It incorporated three large arches into one loop trail. The weather was mild, on the breezy side, but it was sunny and pleasant. The walk walk was not strenuous in the least and we meandered onto the desert floor and then up into huge sandstone formations. It was a great little walk, three miles round trip I think.

Afterwards we drove to the trailhead that accesses Fragile Arch. Even if you haven't been to Arches you have probably seen a picture of this arch. I believe it is actually depicted on the Utah state license plate as well. Kristen was super excited to see this one as well. The trail was four miles roundtrip and it was a moderate climb up dirt trails and exposed sandstone. For some reason that only weather understands the wind began to pick up just as we entered the trailhead. As we climbed up onto the sandstone it was forceful enough that it was actually helping us climb the steep sections of trail. Everytime we turned around to look back windblown sand threatened to enter our eyes and mouth.

As we climbed higher on the trail the wind continued to build. As we rounded the final corner onto the platform that supports the arch my guess is the wind was gusting around 60mph, stronger at times. We had to put our heads down and push into the gale to gain any ground at all. The numerous people on the platform were loosing articles of clothing and crying out at the more extreme gusts. As we were taking pictures a man trying to show off for his friends was standing under the arch and almost got blown down by gusts. He didn't really understand that three feet behind him was a sheer drop, hundreds of feet down. We got our pics and got out of there. We spent the next thirty minutes half running, half stumbling into the wind to get back down to the trailhead.

Aftewards Kris and I were pretty sick of the wind so we headed back to the campsite. We spent an uneventful night in the van reading and got to bed early.