Rest days are scarce!

Wow! We've been having an amazing time, but very busy.....doesn't leave much time for catching up on posting here!

After arriving in Vegas two weeks ago we jumped back into the car the next morning and went out for our first day of climbing. It was a beautiful sunny day and we played around on the rock, getting our muscles used to the idea of pulling us up the cliff faces again. That afternoon my friend Colin met up with us, and on Saturday our friend Sarah flew in from NH for her first climbing trip out west! The four of us stayed at the campground near the Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area where we'd be spending most of our days climbing and exploring the incredible surroundings. The weather was perfect, lots of sun and blue skies during the day, but darn cold at night! Once the sun went down we bundled up in lots of layers to cook dinner, then jumped into sleeping bags to rest up for the next busy day.

On Wednesday last week we all packed our stuff into the SUV Colin had rented (and I mean packed! There was barely room to move.) and we drove about 3 hours West to Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. We met up with Mike's friends Ben, Meaghan and Dan who live in Davis, CA, and his friend Derek who lives and works in the area off and on.

Joshua Tree is such a beautiful place! It's very wild and pure feeling, definitely one of my favorite spots in the world. The rock formations are incredible, they look like huge jumbles of boulders just stacked all over the place. And the Joshua trees themselves look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book! Almost all of the plants have thorns or prickers of one kind or another, so you have to be careful where you walk, but the desert feels very open because there isn't much that grows taller than 5-6 feet (except the Joshua trees). You don't see much in the way of wildlife; some small lizards, big hares and little rabbits, and of course the famous coyotes. We saw one coyote strolling around the campground each day at dusk, obviously it had learned that where there are people there might be food. For the most part though, we'd only hear the coyotes yipping and calling to each other early in the morning or in the middle of the night. It's definitely a thrilling sound to wake up to! Their calls are really interesting, all sorts of different howls, yips and barks. It sounds like they're having a conversation.

The weather turned quite cold when we arrived at Joshua Tree, the first two days we were there we didn't feel like climbing too much because it was hard to get out of the wind. But the mornings were nice, we all got up late, had leisurely breakfasts and then spent some time stretching and doing ab exercises out in the middle of our campsite. What a life! The last two days warmed up quite a bit and we did some bouldering and tired ourselves out completely. Nights were spent cooking dinners and hanging out around the campfire toasting marshmallows. Sarah, Ben, Dan and I did a moonlight walk up the rock formation in our campsite one night. The moon was almost full and incredibly bright, we didn't need any headlamps to see where we were going. We found a way to scramble most of the way up the formation, probably about 150 feet up, and had a great view out over the campground and a big area of the park....it was very cool to see all the little campfires so far below us.


On Sunday afternoon Mike, Colin, Sarah and I smushed ourselves back into the car for the drive back to Las Vegas. We were tired and dirty, so decided to treat ourselves to a cheap hotel room where we could shower and sleep in a real bed. We were all exhausted! Back to climbing at Red Rocks on Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday night we went walking on the strip to show Sarah the craziness of the casinos, it was totally overwhelming....lights, noise, lots of people, quite a change from our climbing life! Wednesday morning Colin and Sarah took their respective planes back to Chicago and NH. It's weird to be without half of our foursome! Mike and I have spent the last two days resting, catching up on laundry, photos, emails and all that stuff. It's nice to have some time to relax a little; we've only had one 'rest' day since we got here and that was spent mostly squashed in the car on the road to J-Tree.

So, tomorrow it's back to climbing! We may be in for some rain and/or snow this weekend (had a little of both last night), hopefully the bad weather will pass us by and we'll be back soaking in the sun in the next couple of days.

Finally got some pictures posted online! Hope you enjoy them: (click on the photo to see each album)

Driving out

1st two weeks

I hope this finds all of you well! Sending love to family and friends!

And we're off!

So, 2,800 miles of driving in 3 days is pretty rough! Mike and I left around 9:00 Monday morning, drove through: NH, Mass, Conn (traffic jam near Hartford, bleagh), NY, Penn, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois before stopping for a brief break early Tue morning. We took turns driving and sleeping until 5:30 a.m., pulled over for a nap then moved on out as a bad rain storm was coming in. We hit St. Louis just as rush hour was starting, and to add to the fun we got stuck in traffic again. This time the highway was closed because of an overturned tractor trailer, so it was time for evasive maneuvers! Found a way to get through the city and back to the highway (through a really rundown and abandoned area, kind of depressing), and then it was back to covering some miles. Pushed on through Missouri and Kansas and got a couple of hours into Colorado then stopped for the night for a good rest before attempting to cross the Rockies.

Bright and early Wed morning (6:00 a.m.) it was off on the final leg. Weather was a little iffy, and we started to have snow on the road as we hit higher elevations. The driving was okay, and we made it through the passes with no problem. Down the western side was a little more tricky as it was snowing a bit more, but it wasn't too bad. Snow kept coming until we hit the Utah border, then suddenly stopped and within a half hour we had beautiful sunshine! Kept on trucking, and just for some more adventure we hit another snowstorm as we went through the mountains. It was most unwelcome! Finally, at 8:00 p.m. we arrived in Las Vegas at our friend Mike's place (yes, it's confusing, there are a lot of Mikes)!! Thoroughly exhausted and reeeaaalllyy hoping not to have to sit down ever again.

Thursday we started climbing! My friend Colin met up with us, and Sarah arrived today (Saturday), so we're looking forward to lots of good climbing, hanging out in the sun and just generally enjoying being slackers! :)