Be Prepared...

Well I head out for Cambodia tonight, but be prepared for lots of stories and LOTS of pictures when I return!!!!

I hate packing!

I don't know what it is... I have this love for traveling to see new places, but I hate packing. I procrastinate the process as long as humanly possible some times (much to my sister's dismay). I'm leaving at the end of this week to head out to Cambodia and Thailand and have yet to pack anything!

One small redeeming factor is that I've created a list (something I really enjoy doing) and have most of the things I need now it's just a matter of collecting them all in the same place and making them fit in my bags.

So I know what I'll be doing tonight... maybe packing a thing or two, although I don't leave til Friday, so what's the rush! ;)

Downtown Portland

It was a beautiful weekend in Portland, a little warm by Portland standards but a wonderful temperature for those of us coming from Phoenix. Portland has some amazing old buildings. I think that I have something for old brick buildings... I think they are beautiful. It's amazing me the detail that is put into them.We headed into town on Saturday morning to go to the Portland Market. It's an open air market located in downtown Portland every Saturday morning. There was so much to see it was fabulous. Overall Portland was a beautiful city that I'm glad I had the opportunity to see.

Columbia River Gorge

This past weekend I headed up to Portland, Oregon for a girls weekend. One of the things that you have to see if you are near Portland is the Columbia River Gorge. It's located east of Portland along the Columbia River. It's absolutely beautiful. We drove along the Gorge, but made sure to stop along the way at a few places. The first place we stoped was to see Oneonta Falls. It's located future back from the road. We had to walk along the creek, over a huge log jam and than through the creek back to the water fall. We also stopped to see Multnomah Falls which is probably the most famous water fall along the Gorge. It's right off the road so most people can easily access it which makes it a little more crowded. From there we headed up the Gorge to Crown Point. It's a viewpoint at one end of the Gorge. It was a beautiful weekend to be outside. Such a wonderful change from Phoenix right now, so I wasn't complaining.

Thoughts on progress...

Do not ask the Lord to guide your footsteps if you are not willing to MOVE your feet.

90 degrees...

...sounds like a decent temperature for the summer here in Phoenix, until you realize that was the LOW temperature last night. It's disgusting when the low temperature is higher than some peoples high temperature. Oh how I love Phoenix summer.

(Just in case you couldn't tell, I've finally caught up!)

Wicked

So Wicked has come to Phoenix for the month of July and we were lucky enough to get tickets to it on Thursday night. This is the second time I've seen the play and I think it was even better than the first time. It was amazing how many more of the clever little lines that I heard (and understood) this time. It is amazing how well they make reference to the Wizard of Oz. Anyways it was a great time.

4th of July

So following tradition I went home to California for the 4th of July. It's not like I want to hang around Phoenix, because for it was suppose to be 110 most of the weekend. I drove home Friday morning. I spent Friday afternoon just hanging out with my family at home. Saturday which was the 4th we followed tradition by going to the beach. It was a gorgeous day at the beach. We got down to the beach around 8:30 and there was no marine layer at all. (If you're not familiar with the California coast there are usually low clouds that hang around the coast.) So to have clear skies that early in the morning it was really nice.We spent the day just enjoying the wonderful weather, being around good people and eating delicious food. The best part of the day is when it starts getting dark and everyone is getting ready for the fireworks. We sit around in anticipation for something to start. We probably waited around for an hour. Than when it was dark they always shoot the fireworks off of the pier. It's kind of cool to see the fireworks with their reflections over the ocean. It's also nice to hear the sound of the waves crashing as you're watching the fireworks. To me it's the only way to spend the 4th of July, so I'm glad that I got to go home for it again.

Oak Creek Canyon

So as you can tell I'm still working on catching up...

So the weekend of June 26th we had a ward campout. We drove up Friday night to a campground just north of Flagstaff. We had about about 70 from our ward camping. They had a snack for us when we got up there Friday night. Other than that we just hung out and enjoyed being in nature. It was the perfect night for camping. The weather was cool enough that having a camp fire felt great. It was also amazing to see all the stars in Flagstaff. It reminds me how much I love the sky.
The next morning we woke up had a fabulous pancake breakfast and took our time cleaning up camp. One the way back home a group of people stopped in Oak Creek Canyon to go for a hike. Oak Creek Canyon is between Flagstaff and Sedona. It's a beautiful canyon that I've driven down before, but never actually hiked. Once again it was a beautiful day to be outside hiking.

We leisurely walked up the trail which was along the creek. We really didn't get that far, but it was beautiful. At one point we found this really steep rock and decided to try hanging upside down on it. Overall the hike was really nice for a Saturday afternoon.

Little Wild Horse Canyon

This is an amazing little slot canyon that is just outside of Goblin Valley State Park. Since I had a long drive back to Phoenix on Friday my parents and sister were kind enough to wake up with the sun (5:00 am) and go out hiking.It was a beautiful morning to be hiking up the canyon and it was amazing to see the beauty of the canyon. The colors were amazing and it was not a difficult hike. Since I didn't have a ton of time we hiked up the canyon for about and hour and a half before we had to turned around to walk back down.Well it was a great end to such a fun week of camping. I'm so glad that I got to get together with my sister and meet up with our cousins. It was also fun to see old places that I have faint memories of and new place that I can create memories of.

Goblin Valley

After the exciting dirt road trip we made it to Goblin Valley. There is actually where we meet up with my parents. They came out to join us camping. At first we set up camp... although we didn't set much up. It was super windy at the campground so we didn't actually set up the tent. From there we decided to go over to the actual Valley of Goblins and hike around. (Note: since it was so windy I didn't take my camera so all the photo credits go to my sister or my dad.)
If you ever get the chance to head out to Goblin Valley you definitely should. It's kind of funny, because the land all around is nothing special, but as soon as you get into the valley there are a bunch of cool formations called "goblins".
We spent few hours hiking around. It wasn't windy over in the valley, so it was super nice. We hiked up a whole bunch of the canyons. It was so fun, but I love just to scramble over rocks.

After hiking around we headed back to camp. The wind has actually died down, so it was really nice over at the camp ground. We finally got the chance to have a camp fire. We found a little scorpion friend my our campfire. He didn't last long though, everyone was scared of him. It was the perfect night to sit around and have a camp fire.

Wild Ride

So the next part of our trip was quiet the adventure. We were headed out to Goblin Valley. My cousin was being the navigator and didn't realize that the one road on the map was actually a dirt road. By the time we got to the road we would have had to back track to get to the paved road, so we decided to take the dirt road. My car isn't necessarily made to dirt road trips, but fortunately the road wasn't too bad. Since I was driving Melissa had to take the pictures.

Dead Horse Point

The next stop on our trip was to Dead Horse Point. It's a Utah state park that over looks the Colorado River. This is another place that a have faint childhood memories of. Actually maybe it's more like I remember it from family home videos we have. I think sometimes that's the were a lot of my memories come from. Dead Horse Point is about 2,000 feet above the Colorado River. There were some amazing views, but if you're afraid of heights at all it's not the place for you. There aren't walls all the way around the point and were there are walls they really aren't very high. And to make things worse it's almost a straight drop down.
It was another fun place to stop and see again. It was fun to relive some old childhood memories. Plus the views are amazing.

Arches National Park

Wednesday morning we left Mesa Verde and were on the road again for Arches National Park. It actually wasn't too long to a trip. We got to Arches in plenty of time to set up camp, and go for a hike. Our camp spot at Arches was really cool. The camp ground is near Devil's Garden in the park. All the camp spots had lots of sand. It did make it a little more comfortable to sleep. After setting up camp we went for a hike in Devil's Garden. The hike around Devil's Garden was beautiful. The first place that we saw in Devil's Garden was the Landscape Arch. It's one of the largest span arches.
The weather was perfect for hiking around. The sun would shine and than it would rain on us. Then the sun would shine again enough to dry us out.
After hiking past Landscape Arch we continued on the trail to Partition Arch and Navajo Arch. Up the trail by those two we found a cool little over look of Landscape Arch. It was actually a place where you could look down from above the Landscape Arch. The only downside was that it was on top of the rocks. It got a little scary so I had to sit down so that I didn't blow over.
From there we headed out to Double O Arch. We actually almost missed the arch, because we were trying to follow the rock carins. We finally made it to the Arch and it was definitely worth it. From there we headed back to camp to have dinner. We had to eat dinner quickly only because we wanted to make it up to Delicate Arch for sunset. It's suppose to be the best time to see the arch.

I was actually amazed at how fast we made it up to the arch. From what I remember the trail was really long, but I think we actually made it up the trail in about 30 minutes. We made it up there in plenty of time to see the sunset. The only problem was that there were lots of low clouds in the sky, so it blocked the direct sunlight unto the arch. We sat up by the arch for a while just enjoying the view and weather. We headed back down just as it was getting dark. We'd done a lot of walking on Wednesday so we just went back to camp and crashed. Thursday morning we woke up and took down camp. Then we were back on the road again. The only place that we stopped on the way out was Balanced Rock. It is amazing how the rock was balanced so perfectly on the other rock.

I'm so glad that we made the trip to Arches, because it was beautiful. If you ever get the opportunity to make it out that direction you should definitely take it.

Walk down memory lane

The next stop along our trip was a little one down memory lane. (Thanks Dad for the pictures). Like before I faintly remember being at Arches National Park but it's really only scattered memories from stories, pictures and home videos. Sometimes I worry that if things were recorded on video or on film that I wouldn't have any childhood memories... maybe I should look into having my memory checked.Anyways the last time that we were at Arches National Park was back in April of 1992. Once again we were there with our cousins although it was only their oldest daughter who was even alive at the time. (She's the little bald baby in the picture). We have good memories from this trip most of which include lots of rain and black trash sacks. On our way back down from Delicate Arch it started raining so hard. It was raining so hard (or maybe it was the lighting) that we stop along the trail to find what shelter we could. Fortunately someone (probably my Dad) decided to carry a few heavy duty black trash bags up the trail with them which made rather nice rain ponchos. When the rain finally died down we made our way back down the trail but it definitely made for some good memories (pictures).