MOAB!

So here it is, Travis blogs again! It's mostly because Katelyn says that our trip to Moab was "my" trip so I have to do the blog. It's all good though, because it was a blast and I don't mind telling everyone about it.

First off, we took of a week ago last Friday down to Moab, UT, which is where Arches National Park is. Ashton, Katelyn's brother, came with us as well. It was nice to get out of Provo, especially since the weather there that weekend was rainy and cold. Anyways, it was only about a 3 hour drive which wasn't bad at all, and we pretty much stopped in Moab only long enough to eat and then we took off for Arches.

We had the whole afternoon there so we decided to hike to Delicate Arch, which is the arch on the license plates for Utah. Katelyn had been working out more, so we didn't have any puke stops this time. It was so amazing though. The red rock is so cool to look at, and the formations are ridiculous how crazy they are!

This picture was right before we made it to Delicate Arch. The second half of the hike was all on the rock. The views were so amazing, being able to look out and see all the different formations. It wasn't too hot, either, which was nice.

So then we finally made it to Delicate Arch.

Recognize it from the license plates?

After that we drove around and found another arch I hadn't remembered going to before which actually turned out to be all of our favorites. It's called Double Arch, and forms kinda an amphitheater. It was a short hike, and we were there a little later in the day and there really weren't many people there.The sun was setting and I got a sweet picture of it through the archThese next ones were cool, you can see Balance Rock through the Arch. Of course, one of Katelyn's favorite pictures is the "romantic" one.

Then we had some fun at Balance Rock


That was pretty much it for the first day. My dad, Skyler, Nick, and Marissa all got in that night. The next day was a lot of fun. My dad, brothers, Ashton, and I all biked the slickrock trail.

It was pretty intense and unfortunately not all of us were the in the greatest shape. So although I thought it was a lot of fun, some of the group swore they would never ride a bike again. However, I'm pretty sure that they look back on it now and think it was pretty cool. I won't lie though, there were some pretty miserable parts. The trail is entirely on the red rock that's typical of the area, and it's pretty much a roller coaster, steep ups and steep downs. There were no huge accidents (an answer to Nick's prayer) although Nick did manage to crash into a cactus and in so doing jeopardized the future of his posterity. Hopefully there are no longterm effects from that.

The next day we went on a quick hike before everyone had to take off. We went on what I think was the must fun hike, simply becuase a lot of the time we were on these narrow "fins" of rock.

It was a lot of scrambling and climbing around, which Katelyn was able to brave which was a good achievement. Eventually we made it to Double O arch and were actually able to hike out on top of the arch.

It was pretty cool being up there, and even though Katelyn's palms were sweating and my dad was freaking out enough for the whole group, it was definitely worth it.

Well, that's about it for this ridiculous novel of a post. I would put up more pictures but this thing is stupid and takes forever to move them around so I'm not. It was a blast, one of the highlights of the summer for sure. Who knows, with it only being a 3 hour drive it just might turn into a little BYU summer tradition???