SPRING BREAK 2009! Days 5, 6, and 7 (aka Desert Schmesert part four)

The last few days have been spent having a lot of fun exploring Moab's best tourist area, Arches National Park. The weather has certainly been better than the blizzard that hit at home, but it still pulled its usual "haha, I'm not really a desert" weather that seems to hit every single time I am here.

On to some pictures from the last few days (ignore the splotchy spots on most of the pictures -- the D70/lenses have some annoying dust on them and I'm too lazy to photoshop the splotchies out for now)

Rhonda on my ride up the Bar M trail.

I found Fred's van and managed to leave Chris a "cryptic" note :)

Wednesday, Chris and I decided to ride our road bikes through Arches. We totaled about 45 miles and 3800 ft of climbing.

It got pretty chilly when the sun dipped behind the clouds and the wind picked up.

Near the campground at the end of the road.

We did a side-trip to hike to the Delicate Arch lookout point. It looked small from there. People looked on in awe as we hiked the "treacherous" 1.5 mile loop in our bike clothes.

We got a million more pictures from biking Arches, and I will eventually put them into a slide show if you are interested in seeing them. Riding through Arches is certainly the way to see it as even at slow riding speeds it was hard to see everything. If you have a road bike, and some extra time in Moab, do this loop -- it's amazing! That night we camped at Sandflats again, as the colder weather moved in.

Overnight the extreme winds and heavy rain moved in, blanketing the La Sal's with more snow.

Thursday was deamed a "rest day" as the weather was generally icky and cold. We decided to use our Arches pass to go back and drive to some of the small hikes we didn't get to do the day before. During our visit this time, the clouds rolled in quickly and it SNOWED. Pssssh, "desert" :)

Chris is always in search of a little adventure, even if it's just on a random rock laying on the ground.

We decided to do a three mile hike to see Delicate Arch up close. The weather started out nice, but once we hit this section of slickrock, the snow (small icy pelets) came crashing down on us. They looked really cool blowing down the rock. People, once again, looked at us like we were crazy, as this time we were headed UP when everyone else was running down away from the weather.

A tradition of the boy's. He's good at handstands.

A nice French guy offered to take our picture, and luckily he seemed to know what he was doing with a camera and took lots of great shots for us.

When we made it back to the car, we decided to head back to town to check in to our hotel. The shower was AWESOME and it feels good to have a home-base that doesn't need packing and repacking each time we want to sleep. We ate at the Diner last night for a pseudo-birthday dinner, since Chris has big riding plans for my actual birthday. The dinner itself was okay, the ice cream afterwards was the best part!

This morning Chris and I had a Starbucks date at a local coffee shop and then I dropped him off to ride with Fred, Mike C, and Dave C. I came back to the hotel room and watched TV, napped, and have been catching up on crappy TV. Hopefully we'll get to go get some dinner soon, then turning in early. Tomorrow I'm hoping to do a small ride or two, nap more, and generally get some quality relaxing in before work starts back up next week. Life's timing has me getting my uncomfortable "why are you babyless" procedure done on Monday afternoon, meaning I won't be headed back to work until Tuesday. I guess I'll take an extra day off wherever I can get it!