Zions Narrows (above)Let me tell you that being back at school is a total and complete nightmare after the gnarly weekend I've just had. On wednesday night me and three roomates packed up and drove to Zion's national park. We arrived there at about 2:30 in the morning Thursday, slept for a few hours, woke up, and went hiking! Zion's beautiful this time of year, absolutely beautiful. The first day we hiked Hidden Canyon and Emerald Pools. Friday we hiked the Narrows and Saturday we hiked the Subway. To do the Subway you have to have a permit because they only allow 20 people a day. They do this in order to preserve the environment and so things don't get really backed up. The actual hike is only 9.5 miles but it takes forever because there are a bunch of technical spots. Back to the permits for a second. So, usually people apply for the permits like three months in advance, and it is done by a lottery. Just because you apply first doesn't mean you'll get it. A few permits are set aside for walk ins at the park (that would be our group). To get those walk in tickets you have to be at the park at 6 in the morning waiting for the rangers to open up. People get there at like 4 in the morning though, and due to fourth of july weekend being the busiest weekend in Zion's people were getting there at 2. Ridiculous. Our friend Bryon (the big cheese) who was with us volunteered to go wait in line at 1:30 to TRY and get permits. Turns out when you are third person in line you have some power. The two people ahead of Bryon were getting permits for another hike so Bryon was first for the Subway. Miraculously he got our eight permits....but further back in line were these three guys. They knew they were so far back that they wouldn't get in so they bartered with us. They offered to pay for all the permits if Bryon would ask for 11 instead of eight. Of course he did. Duh. Who wouldn't? It worked out perfectly because the maximum group size is twelve and we had eleven. Perfect right?! basically what I'm getting at is that the Subway is a hot commodity and we are dang lucky to have gotten the opportunity to do it, especially on the fourth of July.
Moving on. We stared the Subway at about 10:30 and got out by 6:30. Afterwards my car and our new friend Jenny from Russia packed up our campsite and headed off to St. George to meet up with some friends from school. We went up to this bluff to watch fireworks. My roomate Jeri and I still had a lot of energy and decided we wanted to hike down the bluff and back up again. Right as we jumped down off the ledge the cops showed up saying that we were in the blast area and had to leave immeadiately. Well jeri and I hid. The ledge we jumped off was a overhang so we tucked underneath it right against the wall. Everybody left and the dumb cop came by with a flash light at least 3 or 4 more times catching people and kicking them out, but he never saw us. Poor man is blind. We ended up staying up there and watching the foreworks. It was pretty epic.
Ok here goes the crazy bit. One of our friends we met up with, lawrence, was borned in raised in Colorado City,. if you know anything about colorado city you know it is the FLDS headquarters. Lawrence was born and raised in polygamy before he and two brothers converted. He has four moms and 40 brothers and sisters. Since we were close to Colorado City we decided to spend the night there. let me tell you, that house was huuuuge. Me and my roomates ended up sleeping on the trampoline, but still. We were at a polygamists house for goodness sake. How fetching cool is that. Heinous. Anyway those people are the nicest hardest working people ever. Their roads aren't paved and there is sand all about so a bunch of peoples cars got stuck. Man alive those polyg boys were so quick to get out and start pushing it wasn't even funny. I really respect them...well their work ethic at least. Quite the experience to say the least. The nezxt day we woke up and started the drive back to rexburg. On the way we stopped in to a sacrament meeting and also I dropped my Morgan to say hi to everybody. Dar and Shay were back and happy as well as jamo and Larissa. Construction across from Grandma's is insane. It looks super nast. Anyway I have to go do some stuff. i wish I had more pictures but my camera was in a dry bag most of the time and a hassle to get in and out. But I will put up a link to my facebook album that has the few pictures from the trip. Love all.
*mind.... not all the pictures are from Zions. They are from the whole summer semester so far.
I didn't sleep over at a Poly-house, but I WAS in Scotland... That's pretty cool, right?
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