Whew! Ugh.

I'm tired.  Since school got out less than a month ago, I have been to Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point State Park, participated in a three day workshop on the new Utah Core curriculum, led a trip to Yellowstone, completed a three-credit hour class on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and taken a trip to Boston where I toured Plymouth, Lowell, Lexington, Concord, the U.S.S. Constitution, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston's graveyards, and went to two Red Sox games in Fenway Park.  Now I'm sitting in the third day of my last class this summer, Creativity in the Classroom.  In between I've tried to squeeze in climbing, other exercise, family, friends, cooking, and cleaning.  Oh, and sleep.  That usually ends up being last.  Cooking, cleaning, and sleep.  This morning I looked at the dishes in the sink and realized they'd been there for four days.  I skipped a shower and washed half of them.  Maybe tonight I'll tackle the other half and the ones on the stove.  

But here comes the next stage of summer: adventure.  If I do everything possible so far, not counting last minute climbing trips that will probably get suggested by friends (I've already turned down three this month), I will assist in the pilgrim reenactment for Freedom Days, go camping in Glacier National Park, summit the Grand Teton, and go backpacking with my family.  That's just July, but my meetings for school start on the 9th of August, so there's not much summer left after July.  If I do all of that, I will have a grand total of 2 1/2 weeks of un-scheduled time, assuming I do nothing but those planned trips.

Here's the catch, I'd love to do all of them, but here are some things I have to get done this summer somehow:  Move and rearrange/redocorate my classroom, complete another 3 credit hour history course, adapt my English curriculum to the new Utah Core, read about 20 books I'm supposed to teach my gifted students next year, and figure out what the heck I'm teaching my gifted kids next year.  In there somewhere it'd be nice to get 8 hours of sleep (hasn't happened in weeks), do the dishes before they mold, and maybe hang out with some the friends I put off all school year because I was too busy.  And make healthy, good food.  Or try a new recipe for the first time in a year.  That's an impossible order for 2 1/2 weeks.  If I try to fit in all of those trips plus all those necessary plus a 10th of the things I'd like to do, I'm going to hit the school year exhausted, which is a bad way to start a school year where I will be teaching three subjects, one of them new, and once again taking evening classes.

But what do I take out?  This may be the only time I have an opportunity to hike the Grand, though it will require a lot of training I don't have time to do.  How can I not do that?  I already turned down the Freedom Festival opportunity this morning, despite the fact it would give me credit toward my history endorsement.  The family backpacking trip is also a must that cannot be skipped.  Not going to Glacier National Park would free up six more days, nearly a full week.  It's my longest time commitment for the rest of the summer, the easiest one to drop.  An extra week I could sleep and train and work on school stuff and do my dishes and work on school stuff.  But man, would I disappoint my parents and sister who have been looking forward to and planning this trip for a month.  I've only gotten to see my sister and my dad once since summer started, and my mother not at all.

Sigh.  I'm tired.  Yesterday morning I was so tired I lost my breakfast, so I skipped my training after class and went home and slept for three hours.  I didn't get up early this morning and exercise, I slept.  I've got a sore throat, and I'm feeling whiny (can you tell?).

Miss Wesel and Miss E. Run Away to the Desert

School got out on a Thursday afternoon, and Friday morning Allie and I packed up her car and drove to the desert.  In two days we saw Dead Horse Point State Park, which Allie had never seen, and Canyonlands, to which I was a stranger.  It was crazy warm, but while the heat saps your energy, but it also warms your soul.  We saw jack rabbits and prairie dogs and lizards of all colors, sizes, stripes, and spots.  Here are some pictures, though we used Allie's camera for Dead Horse Point, and mine for Canyonlands, so these pictures are only of Canyonlands.  

The bathroom at our campsite had neither roof nor door.  

Sunrise at Mesa Arch

A week ago, after months of searching, I finally found a cowboy hat that fit, looked decent, and  cost me only twelve dollars.  It also meant I had to take a great deal of ridiculous pictures.  

Chillin' on the edge of the Grand View Point

Of course I didn't hit the button on my camera and dash toward the edge of the cliff to get into position before the picture took.  Of course I didn't.  

As we were leaving Grand View Point, it began to rain.  In the Quran, there are multiple times when it refers to "God's mercy," and a footnote will tell you plainly that "God's mercy" means rain.  Being in the desert in the heat of summer for a few days, and walking on paths where sandstone is returning to sand and baking white, the rain is magical, merciful, and heaven sent.  

Adventure

To Infinity and Beyond!!

I almost said no.  When my brother called at nearly bedtime two weeks ago and invited me on a sailing trip that would drain my savings, require two weeks off of work, preparing two weeks of sub plans, using up all of my accumulated personal leave of years plus unpaid leave, and returning only in time to grade my students' final projects before the school year ends.  I said no.

But then I emailed him the next morning and said yes.  And I talked to my administrators, my English department, and my students.  I arranged for a sub, I resigned myself to not paying off my car by the end of the year anymore and to not having any savings, and I started buying things for the trip.  I borrowed cold weather clothes from my sister, but I bought warm weather clothes, a sun hat, boat shoes, a Kindle, and a set of international plane tickets.  Because this sailing trip?  It's in Japan.  We're starting on Hachijo Jima and sailing to the Ogasawara islands, and maybe further on to Iwo Jima.  After that we'll come all the way back to Tokyo.  It's over 600 miles round trip, and could involve humpback whales, snorkeling, hammerhead sharks, plants found nowhere else in the world, flying fish, typhoons, days of sailing in the open water under sun, cloud, and stars, and who knows what else.

So I said yes.  My sub plans are half done, my G/T class is finished early, my last presentation for my Teaching American History cohort is over, my bags are ready to pack, and I'm starting to count down days.  Three.  Three days until I leave.  That means I have only sixteen days left to teach till the end of the school year.

I won't be blogging while I'm gone (not that I've been blogging much lately), but if you want to see information and adventures from the trip, my brother has a temporary blog for the trip.  He's already out sailing this week with his family, and I'll join him on Sunday along with one of my other brothers.  So here I go, for what I think is probably my craziest, biggest, adventure yet, short of the time I slept in a park in Wendover, or perhaps the summer I lived in Japan.

And, because I'm leaving on my next adventure before I've had a chance to blog about my last one, here are a few pictures of my spring break trip.

The Sinkhole Bandits of the Jackass Flats of the San Raphael Swell

Brian at one point went on at great length about the dangers of falling asleep next to ledges.  Then he did this.  

The Colorado River does impressive things, even if you're a long way from the Grand Canyon.

My first slot canyons.  I fully intend to drag multiple friends and family members through these at later points.  

Little Wild Horse Canyon

After five days and many days of desert hiking feet I could have conducted an archaeological dig in the dirt on my feet.

You can't see it well in this picture, but I was bright, bright red.  I put on sunscreen (SPF 50) every day, and burned right through it every day.  Hopefully I'll learn my lesson and reapply more often on the sailing trip.  

Fall Break Mystery Adventure

Way back mid September, two of my friends took a mid-week backpacking trip.  I hiked in one afternoon after school to say hi and see the scenery.  As we sat by their fire, we started scheming a trip when all three of us could go--which meant we needed to wait for my next long break from school, more than a month away.  Knowing our opportunity for adventure would be in mid October, we tentatively planned to head south to warmer mountains.

After that, there was very little about this trip that I planned.  I am usually a planner-type-person, I pack seven kinds of jackets and decide a week in advance what day I will pack.  This trip got out of my hands, and I found myself in the uncomfortable position of being a week away from leaving and not knowing which day we were starting our trip, what day we were coming back, who was coming, or even where we were going.  Trying not to imply that I didn't trust their planning and endeavoring not to be annoying, I would casually ask my friends, as if it didn't really matter to me at all, when we were leaving and where we would going.  Every time I asked I got a different answer.  Once they told me that one other friend was coming, then two, then four, maybe more.  We were going to Zion, maybe the Grand Canyon, maybe some backwoods places not really close to anything I'd heard of.  We were all driving together, then my two close friends were going to stay a few extra days, then they were going to stay for two weeks, then they were going to leave two days early, too.

When Monday came, I was becoming increasingly apprehensive.  This trip was sounding awfully vague, which in my experience often meant badly prepared for and not as fun as it could be if it had actually been plan.  Then, all of the plans changed again that day.  My friends decided not to stay in the woods for weeks, so suddenly we could drive together again.  Brian had our campsites, mileage, and water needs planned from personal experience gained while spending two entire months camping in the area he wanted to take us to.  Then, all of the other people dropped out, and it ended up being just the three of us, just like we had originally planned.  I must admit, I seriously underestimated the planning habits of my camping companions.  We stayed up late getting things ready Tuesday night (about 2 a.m.), and when I headed to school Wednesday morning, I was not only exhausted but worried.  Things were a mess.  Our stuff was piled in random stacks and bags and grocery sacks and paper bags.  Dishes were set out on random countertops between two different apartments, things still needed to be purchased, and I was feeling panicked.  How was all that going to be resolved when I was away teaching all day?  The guys were supposed to pick me up from school that day and we'd take off from there.  I would have no time for last minute packing and reorganizing.  I would just have to trust them to work all morning to magically organize and plan and pack everything.  I was skeptical, I was doubtful, I was downright unhappy as I put the finishing touches on my sub plans for Monday and entered grades.

I have to hand it to them: the boys pulled through.  They picked me up from school with a car packed full of meticulously organized bags of food and supplies, extra things packed for just in case, and all of it arranged with Tetris-esque precision in the car.  We drove off into the sunset, and I relaxed and just let the guys handle the trip.  Seriously, they handled everything.  When we pulled up to a campsite in southern Utah that night at midnight, they had a fire built and dinner cooking without any help from me.  I didn't even know where things were packed.  So I set up the tent and got the bags ready, and just kicked back.  That first night we stayed up late, really really late.  We looked at the stars, we built a big fire, we ate cheesy pasta, we sang songs, we watched the moon rise.  We saw dawn start to lighten the eastern sky.

This is only one of the about two dozen fire pictures I took.

Did I mention it was 5 a.m.?
Did I mention we'd stayed up until 2 a.m. the night before packing?

Then we finally went to bed.  Since I get up at 5:30 everyday, I woke up long before Brian and Will, who both work evenings at a restaurant and hotel.  So I explored around our camp.  We were camping in a juniper forest, which opened up into the strangest woods I'd ever seen only a hundred yards from our camp.  It was a deadwood forest.  A fire had killed, but not burnt the trees years before.  It was almost spooky, despite the cheerful daylight.

What my waking up before everyone else looks like.  

When the boys got up and we finally ate breakfast/lunch, we started gathering wood, an easy task with the deadwood forest so close.  We were headed into the real desert after this campsite, and there would be no gathering wood for the rest of the trip.  So we compiled an impressive stock of the some of the best firewood I've ever seen and the guys lashed it to the top of the car.

"I'm gonna wrangle this wood and take it the market." 

The ability to break down trees sort of went to his head.

Then we drove the rest of the day.  We camped that night in northern Arizona, far away from cell phone service and paved roads.  The next morning (Friday), we drove to the trailhead and hiked Mount Trumbull.  The trail wound through rocks and juniper into a forest of beautiful pine, tall, straight, and draped in perpetual late afternoon light.  The ground was carpeted with long needles, ranging in color from the orange of freshly fallen needles, to the gray-white of sun-bleached older layers.  On top of the needles were plentiful dark pine cones, making a beautiful contrast to the pale needle ground cover.

We reached the top, ate lots of trail mix (this trip involved the consumption of gallons worth of trail mix), and enjoyed the view and the sunshine.  Then, as we descended back into the forest, we stopped to play baseball.

Up to bat.

The pitcher.

After our hike we drove to a spot to see some rock art and got a bonus of a beautiful sunset on the hike out.

That night we drove to Tuweep/Toroweap, which is described like this,

If you’re a serious solitude seeker who doesn’t mind a little extra effort to achieve some peace and quite, then boy, do I have a spot for you! It is called Tuweep, and it lies on the north rim of the Grand Canyon on land known as the “Arizona Strip.” It is one of the most remote places in the United States, with one of the most spectacular views in the world. It takes an extra dose of adventurous spirit and the ability to put up with everything “primitive and rustic” to enjoy this adventure, but if you can make the effort the reward will be well worth the trip. For most adventurers, Tuweep can only be accessed by one of three bone jarring, tooth rattling dirt roads, the shortest of which is 60 miles, and the longest a wearying 90 miles of dusty, rutted, sometimes impassable dirt. For this reason, Tuweep experiences far fewer visitors per year than any other site on the canyon.

(http://www.swaviator.com/html/issueMA02/Tuweep3402.html).

We didn't see the view that night, though Brian assured us it would spectacular when we woke up.  By the time we got to Tuweep, it was well past dark, and the only part of the description we could testify to was the "primitive" road.  Although the campground had few amenities (no running water, garbage, check-in, cell-phone service, etc.), it did have a very clean and comparatively sweet-smelling pit toilet.  After two days of camping on BLM land, it seemed like like an incredible luxury.  Although we got there after dark, Will had been planning our dinner since Tuesday, when he stayed up late spicing steaks and packing them into individual bags to let them soak up the spices for days.  He had gathered special wood on Thursday to create better coals to cook over, and when we finally arrived at Tuweep on Friday night, he got down to business.  While we waited for the coals to be perfect, Brian and Will got to work on the hors d'oeuvres: Triscuits, summer sausage, and cheese roasted over the fire with a double sided grill Will and Brian jerry-rigged with twisty ties.  What did I do to help?  I read out loud to them, told them stories from Norse mythology, and pitched the tent.  I felt thoroughly spoiled on this trip.  Will even let me have the first steak.  It was fantastic.

The master chef crafts the perfect coals.

Appetizers

A serious stake over serious coals.  

In the morning, we woke up to this:

We packed up everything we needed for breakfast and hiked an easy fifteen minutes to the rim itself: a 3000 foot drop down to the Colorado River.  It was completely breathtaking.  I'd never seen the Grand Canyon before, but I had high expectations.  However, no expectation can really prepare you for the reality, complexity, enormity, and beauty of that canyon.  After goofing around taking pictures on the edge for a while, we cooked our oatmeal, Then we spent hours just laying in the sun on a cliff edge, alternating staring out at the canyon and up at the impossibly blue, completely cloudless sky.

Then Brian taught us to make walking sticks from a Yucca cactus, which led to hours of crafting, and then days of horseplay and sword fighting.  After hanging out at camp for a while, we packed up our pasta supplies and two different kinds of tea and headed back out to the rim to watch the starts come out over the canyon.  The stars were some of the most awesome (in the old-fashioned booming voice and quick intake of breath kind of way) I have seen in my life.  That led to more hours of laying on rocks watching the sky.

The next day, Sunday morning, we clambered around on the rocks at our campsite, and then moved on.  We drove several more hours on the "bone-rattling" roads to Whitmore Point, where even Brian had never been.

A trace of civilization.

One of the side roads we stopped by for a bathroom break.  

It ended up being one of the coolest places we went on our trip.  At some point in the last few million years, a lava flow cut over and through the sandstone of the canyon and actually dammed the Colorado River.  The dam lasted 20,000 years before breaking.  This makes Whitmore point a confusing and delightful mix of lava rock both porous and smooth, river and lake rocks, and the characteristic sedimentary rock of the canyon.  While exploring a side ravine we nick-named the Dragon's Nest, we saw a tarantula.  It was blocking the only easy way out of the ravine, and I gathered up my courage and sprinted past it into a patch of cactus.  Go figure.

Monday morning, in our few remaining hours before we needed to start the long drive back, we hiked down to the Colorado River.  From Whitmore Point, the hike is fairly easy and safe, and takes an hour at most.  We jumped into the cold water of the river and washed off days of dust.  I'm not sure how effective that was, even with the biodegradable soap I had brought that we gleefully scrubbed off with.  The water was nearly opaque.  But it still felt fantastic to clear out five days of grease from my hair and layers of sunscreen from my skin.

While we dried off on the river bank in the warm Arizona sun, a flotilla of rafters drifted by.  Two men in a duckie came up to chat, and we found out they were on DAY 16 of their float trip. They must have been on the river a long time, because they talked like they were from a renaissance fair, and seemed so happy to see us that they began throwing us Canadian Beer.  In the end, we ended up with a free six pack worth of non-Utah beer (This is significant because beer is both more expensive and watered down in Utah).  Too bad beer tastes gross.

We finally got back to the car and began to drive home.  We arrived at St. George and our first paved road, water fill-up, gas station, and cell-phone service in four days.  We got there with about ten minutes of gas left in the car and two gallons of water.  I clutched my cell phone for half an hour before we got there, waiting to call my mom.  Because I hadn't known where we were going, I couldn't prepare her for me being out of contact on a mystery camp trip with boys she'd never met.  I was worried there'd be helicopters searching for us.  The guys watched the gas gauge anxiously, I watched my phone.

We drove and drove and drove.  The guys eventually fell asleep, and I took over driving for the first time all trip.  I listened to This American Life, I sang Broadway songs, nonsense songs, jazz, hymns, anything I could think of.  We got back to my school, and I climbed into my cold car, which had been sitting in the school parking lot for six days.  Then I drove the weary half hour back to my apartment, and dragged my dusty pack up to my apartment at about 2 a.m.  Three hours later I staggered up off my bed and out the door to teach.  I hit the ground running this week.  I've got 200 projects and papers to grade by Friday, I've got class and homework, and I've got a trip home planned this weekend.

Despite the stress it's placed on this week, and despite my apprehensions going into it, this mystery adventure turned out to be one of my favorite trips I've ever taken.

Neglect

I know, I haven't written in weeks.  I know, you probably didn't notice.  But I felt guilty.  I feel guilty after all my declarations of become an active blogger, etc. to suddenly abandon my blog for weeks and then only reappear long enough to post a few pictures and excuses.  Here goes:

Excuse #1
I haven't blogged much because I've actually been keeping myself busy.  The first month of summer was a blur of climbing, hiking, road trips, hanging out with friends, biking, climbing, skating, hanging out with friends, and sleeping at odd hours of the night.

Excuse #2
The daily whirlwind of activities hasn't seemed very worth blogging about ("I went climbing today at _________ with ______________, and I got a new bruise next to the old ones.  In other news, I ate a sandwich before hurrying off to hang out with_______________.).  The things that are worth blogging about, like my 40 days of vegan being up and what I thought about it, my dreads (and there's a ripening saga there), etc., I haven't had/made the time to sit down and craft the blogs they deserve.

Excuse #3
I'm in New York!  I started out in Long Island last Wednesday and moved to Ithaca on Sunday.  I'll be here till Saturday, and on Sunday I go to Idaho.  During all of this I'm playing with nieces and nephews I usually don't see more than once a year.  This week I'm helping them at violin camp: staying in a dorm room with them, going to classes with them, convincing the youngest one that she doesn't want her Mom who has to go to her older  brother's lesson but instead she wants me and a day-old bagel smuggled out of the cafeteria, etc.  Who has time to blog?

Excuse #4
I never blog in the summers.  Really.  Last summer, I think I posted a grand total of two.  The summer before, I think I posted a grand total of two.  Counting this post, I have already posted three!  I've already increased my summer blog output by 50%!  What have I got to feel guilty about?

Whew.  I feel better now.  Here are some pictures if what I've been doing:

Getting ready to ride my new bike to the climbing gym.  Yes, I'm a hippie.  Yes, bike helmets are dorky. Yes, that's a band-aid on my chin.  That's why I'm wearing the dorky bicycle helmet.

The dreads get their first taste of saltwater on the Long Island beaches.

A seven hour car ride makes for sleepy children.

In between lessons at violin camp.

My nephew practicing on the quad of Ithaca College.

 She was probably saying "I want my mom!"