US Travels

I spent the past week-ish traveling around the US. First stop: Salt Lake City to visit two of my favorite people, Chris and Max.

A super exciting part of the visit that we had been planning for awhile was a trip down to Southern Utah. Bright and early on Friday morning, we left Salt Lake and drove for about four hours to the area around Goblin Valley state park. We hiked in a canyon that contained what is called the "Great Gallery", which is a rock panel with lots of incredible petroglyphs that were drawn by various civilizations over the years. The whole hike was really amazing, and it was fascinating seeing all the different form and varieties of rock, and to think about the geological processes that went into shaping what we were seeing. Here are some really cool rocks:
Our lunch spot was especially cool - the rock face curved in over us and created a sheltered sandy beach. It was incredible to stare upward and feel like the rocks were going to come crashing down upon me. Here are some of the petroglyphs that were our reward at the end of the hike:
There was a log book where visitors could write their thoughts and impressions about their journey to see the petroglyphs. It was really interested to read what different people took away from their visit - a lot wondered about the people who had drawn the images, some thought about the passage of time and geology, and one man named Cecil from San Francisco wrote that he thought the image of the dark man with the dog was attractive and wished that he could meet him. It was getting late, so we hiked out of the canyon to go make camp. Here is Chris, surveying the territory that we conquered.
The next morning, we hiked in another canyon. This one was a "slot canyon", with very narrow walls. See how narrow they are!
Around lunchtime, we started the drive back to Salt Lake. When we arrived back at the guys' apartment, we were so exhausted that three hour naps were in order. The rest of that night was spent eating ice cream (made by midgets!) and drinking beer on the porch. On Sunday, we ate some delicious breakfast at a really cool and hip old-timey themed diner. Normally, I strongly dislike old-timey themed diners. Case in point: that stupid 1950s themed diner in Claremont Village. That place was terrible and I hated it: cliched decor, icky food, etc. However, this place had really neat and eccentric decor and atmosphere in general. I had some banana pancakes that were delicious. I also like banana pancakes because it is a really fun phrase to say, especially if you say it with gusto. Seriously, get all excited and say "banana pancakes" and I guarantee you will be having fun. Next, we went to the botanic gardens for a nice walk. The most exciting part of this was when I got to ride a giant lizard!
It was a really nice day (quite cool for Salt Lake), so we played some frisbee golf in the afternoon. I enjoy playing frisbee golf. However, I am also truly horrible at it. We created a new course, so Max and Chris would set the pars for the holes and end up with a score at par or maybe one above for each hole. I, on other hand, would end up with a score at least twice par each time. My finest moment was when I was about to hit the hole, tossed my frisbee too hard, and it rolled down an enormous hill all the way back to the starting point. I took a 10 on this hole and called it good. We concluded my visit on Sunday night with a visit to a really delicious local brew pub called Squatters. The selection of beers was quite overwhelming but I always like hearing about all the different kinds and the crazy things that people do to try to differentiate their beer from the pack.

Monday morning I headed back to Seattle, where I met my parents and we headed over to the Olympic Peninsula for a week of camping. We were camping near a town called La Push. This is near the town of Forks. Not being retarded 13 year old girls, my family and I were initially very confused with all the references to vampires when we stopped in the town for some food. We the realized that Forks is where that dumb book series Twilight is set (here I am assuming that the union of the set of people who read my blog and the set of people who read Twilight would be zero). So, the town was overrun with vampire obsessed 13 year olds. A much cooler town than Forks was the town of Beaver, WA.
Camping was fun, we mostly hiked and walked on the beach. The Olympic Peninsula is very beautiful and contains a lot of mostly undisturbed beaches because they are on reservation land. The other great part about being on reservations: huge firework stands! In Washington, fireworks are mostly only legal on the Indian reservations, so they are a great place to stock up. On the way home, we stopped in the small town of Pouslbo to do some sea kayaking. The neat thing about Poulsbo is that it has a strong Norwegian influence, so they have a lot of Scandanavian products in the stores there. We went to a mini-mart featuring imports and I bought some rye bread and curry pickled herring (my favorite flavor). Mmmm mmm!

Since I have been home I have been doing some freaking out about moving to Singapore, followed by a bout of extreme laziness this weekend. I finally got in list-making mode and have my plan all set out and will get to work on it bright and early tomorrow.