Leg 2 of the trip

For pictures and more information on what we've actually done, check my Facebook pictures.

Tyler and I have been on the road for 18 days now... Feels like it's been forever since I've seen my family in Bloomington and so much longer since I was still in school for the year! It's been a trip, that's for sure! And we have another week out here!

Anyways, I've still been in awe of how big our Lord is. Since we last talked, I hiked the rim to rim trail at Grand Canyon (21 miles in two days with over a mile of elevation change down and up again), we saw the Hoover Dam, the instant gratification of Las Vegas, the amazing diversity of Los Angeles, a couple of baseball games, and the beautiful Bay Area in "Nor Cal". It's been a long week to say the least.

A few words on the Grand Canyon...

It was amazing. It's so vast and incredible. To see a mile straight down and such incredible design around everything in the area is unspeakable. The climate changes so immensely in this small 21 miles. In our time there it was 80 degree high with a FOREST (yeah, we didn't know there were forests around the Grand Canyon either) on both rims while it's 105 (120 in the sunlight!!) in the bottom of the canyon. God is so freaking creative... I, nor anyone that I know, is smart or cleaver enough to create something that functions in this way. He is truly a God worth worshiping!

The hike was incredible as well. The views were what kept me going on our 14 mile hike out of the canyon. The difficulty of the hike out was way too hard. It was almost difficult to enjoy what I was doing because I was in so much pain. We finally made it out though and I was so happy that I gave complete strangers high fives.

Contrast

In the last week we've done a lot of things. It was so interesting to come from being in the wilderness, camping for two weeks to being in such populated areas. I have a little more of a perspective and curiosity about why things are the way they are. I've enjoyed seeing what is natural in nature. When I'm in nature, it's so quiet. I'm able to hear things that I don't in the city. I can feel things I don't feel when people are around. When I'm in the wilderness, the natural comes... well, natural. It's not a challenge to force myself against what needs to get done that day to read my Bible or to meditate on our Lord's vastness. I love it. I think that the pleasantness of people on the trail is due to this. There is no one saying who you should or should not be out there. It's just you, me, and nature. There's no need to be someone you're not or to impress anyone.

Coming to the cities of the west coast, I've also noticed that so many things are man-made in this world, too from dams to buildings to culture to racism. We make the way that we interact with each other. My interactions with people on the trails in the wilderness are much more pleasant as a whole than mine with people in the city. Why? Do we have so much going on in the city that we forget what is important? When we're in the wilderness among Creation, is it easier to see what's important?

If there's so much tranquility where there is nothing but God and Man while so much pain where there is Man... I don't know. Something that I've been losing sight of while living in Milwaukee is finding God in the City. It's totally different than in the wilderness... Jesus says that when we serve the least of these, we're serving Him. That means that when we see the least of these to society, we are experiencing God. They are something to respect just like we do the nature in a national park... In what ways can we see God in the city or everyday life? He's everywhere all the time. We just need to find Him sometimes...

Zion National Park

Hey y'all! We got to Grand Canyon yesterday afternoon. We're currently resting up for our big trip through the canyon! We're going to be taking a shuttle from the North Rim to the South Rim in a couple hours and then set out on our adventure tomorrow morning. We will be back in civilization on Saturday late morning/early afternoon. Just an idea of what we're going to be doing, check out this site... http://www.everytrail.com/guide/hiking-the-grand-canyon-rim-to-rim. The only difference is that we're going from the South Rim (4300 ft elevation change) to the North Rim (5800 ft elevation change). So, the way we're doing it is the unpopular way to say the least.

Anyways, we just got done with Zion National Park in Southwest Utah. It was beautiful. Check out my facebook for pictures. We did two famous day hikes here: Angel's Landing and The Narrow Straights. Angel's Landing is a 1500 foot ascent through 2.5 miles whilst part of it is more like climbing than hiking. Don't worry... there are some chains for us to hold onto for the real cool parts. :)

Tyler and I's favorite part in this hike was a section that was about 7 feet wide and 1200 feet straight down on either side. It was a blast. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the hike up...

This is the first ascent at the beginning of the trail.

A view back towards the beginning of the trail... The trailhead is by the road in the left side of the valley. 

A picture at the top! What a view!

A picture from the road to the peak that we hiked to... The one on the far left.

The final ascent to the top...

I don't have a lot more time to talk about the Narrow Straights but here is goes. It was BEAUTIFUL. For those of you that don't know, it's a 9.4 mile round trip hike through a slot canyon. So there's a river through it all. We took a small canyon off of the main trail to a water fall that added around 2.5 miles to the hike so together, we hiked around 12 miles that day... mostly walking through a river. The river is mostly around a foot deep and at points it got to 10 feet deep. Tyler took every chance he could to jump off of rocks into the river while I joined him every now and then... I was too cold as the water was a whopping 56 degrees! My camera died about half way through the hike so here's some pictures and videos of the canyon from what I had it for.

Week 1

This first week has been quite an eventful one! We arrived in Moab, UT in hopes of adventure, fun, and beautiful scenery. All of these things occurred and more! It took us a little longer to get to Moab because of the Chicago Blackhawks game 7. We stopped for a few hours in Des Moines, IA to watch the game and then continued on our way. We drove through the Rocky Mountains in the early morning and through the dessert of western Colorado/Utah in the afternoon arriving in Moab around 2 in the afternoon. We attempted to try and find a place to stay for a couple days while we went on day hikes at the national parks around the area. For those of you that don't know, there are 2 large national parks (Canyonlands and Arches) around Moab and a few state parks as well.

It took some frustrating conversations and multiple iterations to find an open campground. We eventually did and it was beautiful. It was on sand (this was the first time I'd seen sand outside of a beach or body of water) with a sloped rock behind it perfect for climbing and watching the sunset over the miles of desert. (pictures below)

The sand was the loosest around our campsite (of course). We were probably the only people at our campsite that did not have a 4-wheel drive car and thus we got some friendly help from the locals pushing our car out of this sand. :)

This is the wonderful sunset and some of the only clouds
we saw in our entire stay in Moab

Dead Horse Point State Park

This was our first park that we stopped at. We spend the entire afternoon here and it was wonderful! The canyon size is half the size of the Grand Canyon in both depth and width. This canyon is unique because it's in a number of different movies. Most people will mistake this canyon for the Grand Canyon.

We enjoyed a lunch at an overlook of the canyon (shown below). Tyler and I had a good time walking around this park learning about an environment that we've never seen before.

Canyonlands National Park

This was my favorite national park in Moab. Canyonlands is the largest national park in Utah separated by the Green and Colorago Rivers into three sections: Needles, Islands in the Sky, and The Maze. Canyonlands is the national park in the area for the adventurer. There is not much that you can see without walking at least 3 miles out. They have many awesome multi-day hikes. Canyonlands has a rule that you have to carry out all poop. We were able to avoid having to follow this rule. :) Also, the hike that we went on didn't have any water sources so we had some heavy packs for a 2 day trip. We brought in five gallons of water.

We spent 3 days, 2 nights in the Needles District. Unfortunately, my camera died during the first day. There were numerous fields of mushroom shaped rocks that roll throughout the entire park. The needles are the walls that shape these mushrooms. 

There was a point in one of our hikes that we were in a fracture of a canyon (similar to a slot canyon but it doesn't flash flood). It was so beautiful going through these tall formations. About two times a day on these hikes, it would open up into a field and we were able to see for miles again until it closed up into a narrow tall canyon. Below are some pictures from the first day. The second day was by far the most spectacular.

This view is similar to our first night's campsite. We had miles of view with
needles forming the walls around that view.

On our hike out, we started before the sun rose to beat the heat of the day and to conserve water. We walked for about 30 minutes in the dark under the stars. This was a humbling experience. It's hard to not feel small underneath the stars like this. We made it out to our car by  7:30 in the morning.

Arches National Park

We did this trip yesterday somewhat unexpectedly. We got out of our trip in Canyonlands and we wanted to get a hotel room for an evening. We were tired and wanted a break. When we got in Moab from our trip we tried to get a hotel. This didn't work out too well as it was the weekend in a small town living on tourism and, to our luck, there was a marathon in town! Yesterday was quite a rough day. Here's the breakdown:

• We weren't able to find a hotel.
• There were no campsites available at Arches National Park thus leaving us homeless for a night.
• We attempted to backcountry camp here but ran into complications as this park "is not built for backpacking" (said by the park rangers)
• We gave up on staying in Moab so we drove over by our next stop in southwest Utah. We got a hotel for the next day (today) but didn't have one for last night still. We thought we would try to convince our hotel for the following day to let us in for a discounted price as we were getting into town around 3 in the morning. They were booked.
• We tried virtually every other hotel in town and the next town over. All booked or over priced.
• Finally found a good deal to stay at a hotel for a "day rate" from 5 am to 5 pm (which is where I'm writing this now) and poked around town till 5 am to check in.
• We finally got to go to sleep at 5:30 after a shower and 25 hours of being awake since we hiked out of Canyonlands the morning before.

So, the time before the hotel debacle, we spent in Arches National Park. This was a gorgeous park. Check out my Facebook for pictures as there are too many awesome ones to post in here. After spending 48 hours in Canyonlands, it was hard being in Arches. We had not seen a person in 40 hours coming into it and there were tourists everywhere here. Needless to say, we got frustrated fast but we still enjoyed ourselves on our longest day yet of hiking! Total we hiked 10 miles of hilly terrain.

Delicate Arch is the most famous arch in Arches National Park. It's in the picture below. We heard it's best to see at sunset. Well, we weren't able to start our hike until around 30 minutes until the sunset was complete. We booked it. We finished a 1.5 mile hike that goes 500 feet up with some extra hills in there in 20 minutes. We made it up in time to see the beauty.

















I succeeded at making a fool of myself. I got there before Tyler did. I was expecting an arch that did not look like delicate arch (to the right). That looks pretty delicate, wouldn't you say?! Anyways, I got up there expecting the arch to look like this, not what is shown above. So I got up to the arch, and everyone is looking the other way! I saw this wonderful arch but I didn't know where the "real" delicate arch was! So I rushed around looking for it and was very frustrated, tired, and annoyed from everything else that went on that day.

I run up to Tyler and I say, "Where is the arch?!?" He points to the giant one that is right in front of us. "Duh, Donnie." Well, mark that one up to Donnie being an idiot. We sat for another 30 minutes enjoying the sunset and the view of the beautiful arch in front of us.

How am I like a fire ant?

So this is the part on where I'm going to share what I have learned and how I've grown so far this trip.

Hiking through the Lord's creation has been an extremely humbling experience. I remember when I was 10 years old and going to Chicago with my parents. I would stand at the then Sears Tower and would say to my parents "I'm so small, mom!" I've had those same thoughts as a 22 year old the last 6 days. Walking through canyons that are 2,000 ft tall and go on for tens of miles is super humbling. It makes me feel insignificant. 

When I was reflecting on this at our campsite one evening in Canyonlands, I couldn't help but notice these ants around my feet (fire ants to be more exact). They were super busy getting food, building things, doing any kind of things. I really have no idea what ants do... I just know they're always moving. I was watching them and realized that I was like an ant in my everyday life. I couldn't help but relate to them... If we take this metaphor as me or us as a human race as ants, then I was kind of like God when I was sitting here in the middle of the wilderness (although I'd be a terrible god and I'll tell you why later...) 

I felt as though if I were one of those ants I would be curious as to why this sandal was in this familiar landscape that I called home. I would want to explore my surroundings in order to do whatever I was doing as an ant. And, that's what they did. They climbed up on my sandal. I don't have a personal liking to fire ants so I kicked them off of my sandal. And that's when I started to relate to them. I can be a busy-body trying to get done what I needed to get done and search every avenue to get there, especially God (my gigantic foot in the ants' case). 

What if they were just curious? What if they just thought that there was something on my foot for them to eat or to build with? I think that when we explore our curiosities in God, he will do the exact opposite of what I did. He lets me and you walk around on hit foot trying to find whatever we're going to find. He says "...search and you will find, knock and I will open" (Matthew 7:7). Even if you bite him (although He probably prefers you don't), He will still respect your curiosity. He will not shut you down. So, I'm spending my time with God this trip being curious and not being afraid to ask potentially weird or hard questions.