Our Trip

Troy and I are back from our weekend away. We spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday down in Moab, Utah at the loveliest Bed & Breakfast. Sunflower Hill was just spectacular. Thanks again Kevin and Joanna! We really, really, really appreciated it! Our room was wonderful and quaint, the breakfast was delicious, and we plan to go back simply because we never had the time to sit and relax by the gorgeous pool.

We went down on Thursday and, before heading into town, we drove through Arches National Park. Arches is incredible! It seems as though God decided to use that particular acreage as his sandbox. He stacked rocks on top of other rocks that, seemingly, could not possibly balance. Then he poked holes in other rocks to make implausible archways.

On Thursday evening we went to a western show/dinner and basically ate ourselves silly. I had barbecue chicken, a baked potato, beans, biscuits, apple sauce, and spice cake. It was a good thing I ate a lot because it prepared me for the next day where I would see this view:

How does one see such a beautiful view, you might ask. Well, any normal kind of person would charter a helicopter. We, however, decided to go wheeling. I don't know what Troy's idea of off-roading was but I thought you drove around on back country dirt roads and had the occasional obstacle like, oh I don't know, a two foot wall. We were passengers in the vehicles of some of the members of our church. They go wheeling on a very consistent basis, are mechanics, and know what they are doing. This was of some comfort on a trail that took us 12 hours to complete and has obstacles with names such as Launch Pad, Golden Crack, Widow Maker, The Wall, Double Whammy and Body Snatcher. Unfortunately the heat combined with the bumpiness of the trail left me feeling nauseated for about half of our trek. There was also a tense situation where a truck was contemplating whether or not it would roll over. Apparently my husband was not going to get squashed if it had, indeed, flopped onto its side but I thought he was. Visions of squished Troy and bashed and bleeding Kevin floated through my mind. But these people are professionals and the truck never rolled. Troy was unsquashed. Kevin was unbleeding. When we got on the highway at the end of the day, one of our fellow trekkers asked me how I liked it. I said that, on the positive side, it had been very impressive. I'd seen scenery I never would have dreamed of seeing. I never imagined that vehicles were capable of such feats. And on the negative side, I'd been pretty good and freaked out by the tense situation in the middle of the day. He looked at me with a blank face and asked me what I was talking about. For these hardcore wheelers (is that a word?) it had been all in a day's work. I, on the other hand, had clung to my husband and bawled about how I thought he was going to get smashed. It left a much longer lasting impression on my own self, apparently. So maybe I'm too big of a wussy for wheeling? But then the views were spectacular. I don't know, the jury hasn't gotten back to me yet. Below is a picture of The Crack.

I'm not entirely sure what this is a picture of but I thought it looked cool. Doesn't it just look like that vehicle is going to flip right up and over itself? I know, right! Impressive. I mean, these people are like serious stud drivers. For real.

On Friday we went rafting on the Colorado and it was a BLAST! I was born with a significant amount of fish DNA. Give me water in just about any form and I am so very happy in my element. I've rafted many many times before but only one other time with a river guide. The stretch of river that we were on only had class 2 and 3 rapids and we weren't paddling but I didn't mind the leisurely float one bit. There were several other rafts with our group and one raft, in particular, was full of instigators. They started the water fight and, when we retaliated, we lost our bucket and it was taken by the other raft. I found this to be unsatisfactory and I jumped in. Attempt number one at rescuing our bucket failed miserably and I swam back to my own raft. During attempt number two, these large men were literally chucking my body back into the river as I tried to get into their raft. Apparently they didn't get the memo that I am a smallish woman! Finally I got fed up with them and I decided to bring one of those fellas into the water with me. I wrapped my arm around his and tossed him over my shoulder. I yelled to my raft that I had a hostage. I mean, I assumed the other raft would gladly trade our bucket for their POW. I fully intended to use him as leverage. But then I realized that he was gasping and looking terrified. I'm not even kidding that this was a full grown adult man. Not only had he been tossed rather easily into the water by a girl who weighs less than 120 pounds, he was now panicking. Even I'm not mean enough to force a petrified adult male to bob up and down in a slow moving river with a perfectly safe life vest on. Plus rule number four in The Pastor's Wife Handbook says something about not being a bully. So I let him go. Without my bucket. And that's when I noticed that his wife was freaking out and crying and I realized that I had somehow tapped into some sort of giant family fear. Only when I was back in my own raft did I realize that his daughter (or granddaughter, I never figured out if he was an old dad or a young grandfather) was sobbing over the whole ordeal. I guess I broke rule number four without even knowing it. So let this be a lesson to you all. I can dish it out but I am generally very good at taking it. If you're going to manhandle me off of your raft, you're coming in with me. I'm feisty like that. Oh it was a fun day! I want to do it again. Right now.

We left after rafting and drove home. It was a great little trip. We even enjoyed the drive being that it was uninterrupted by toddler screams and squawks. Would you believe that my son looked bigger to me than when I left him three days ago? You know what else looked bigger? These.

My first harvest.