School has started again. After the last week of last semester (in which I barely made it out alive) I was a little nervous to come back. What if my teacher now thought I was stupid because I had almost failed a test THREE times? Would all the teachers treat me differently?
Luckily my teachers are amazing, it's almost like that last finals week never happened. I've made a special effort to be early to class every morning, listen during lecture, and not waste time during lab.
That being said, it's only the third day and I'm already tired. In fact, I already want a nap tomorrow. How do people get through their days without nap time?? Am I the only 23 year old out there who enjoys nap time so much that I will pick sleep over food every time? I am convinced that those who say that they can never take naps are just kidding themselves. I feel like I'm making up for all those times when I was younger, when I didn't want to take a nap. This is normal, right? Heaven help me when I have children...
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Mount Timp hike
I forgot to post about this one!! About a month ago I got a call from my friend Beau, and he's like, let's go hike Timp on Thursday! The plan was to start at midnight (technically Friday) and hike to the top in time for the sunrise. Of course I was in, how could I pass that up?? Never mind that the mountain is over 11,000 feet tall, which would make it the highest elevation I've been on EVER. Also the trail is about 14 miles round trip, what's not to love about that?
So Beau, his friend Jordan and I set out on our adventure. The hike up was not bad at all, I was mostly scared about bears! It was almost chilly but perfect for hiking. The best part was that it was so dark that I couldn't see how far we had to go, which made it so much easier to keep going at a pretty good pace. It took us about five hours to get to the top, we even had an hour to spare once we got there before the sun even came up. Of course, me being me I started singing "Circle of Life" when the sun appeared. I mean, my life is a musical after all. We hung out with the other people at the top who had braved the mountain, took some pictures, and then started down around 7:30 am. We were well above the tree line and could now see what we were hiking through on the way up. Before we had gone very far, we saw some mountain goats!! My very first time seeing them so of course I was excited out of my mind. We were able to get super close to them since they were so used to people, it is the most popular hike in the Wasatch after all, so they were used to people getting close. Anyway, got some great pictures of them.
The hike down was surprisingly hard, we were already so sore from the climb and so coming down was pretty brutal and slow. We had to cross this giant glacier-ice pack that took forever because it was so slippery. We had crossed it earlier in the way up but we hadn't been able to see how big it really was. However, I was able to take in the beautiful scenery and just enjoy being on this huge mountain that I've now grown to love. I took lots of pictures so enjoy some of my favorites!
So Beau, his friend Jordan and I set out on our adventure. The hike up was not bad at all, I was mostly scared about bears! It was almost chilly but perfect for hiking. The best part was that it was so dark that I couldn't see how far we had to go, which made it so much easier to keep going at a pretty good pace. It took us about five hours to get to the top, we even had an hour to spare once we got there before the sun even came up. Of course, me being me I started singing "Circle of Life" when the sun appeared. I mean, my life is a musical after all. We hung out with the other people at the top who had braved the mountain, took some pictures, and then started down around 7:30 am. We were well above the tree line and could now see what we were hiking through on the way up. Before we had gone very far, we saw some mountain goats!! My very first time seeing them so of course I was excited out of my mind. We were able to get super close to them since they were so used to people, it is the most popular hike in the Wasatch after all, so they were used to people getting close. Anyway, got some great pictures of them.
The hike down was surprisingly hard, we were already so sore from the climb and so coming down was pretty brutal and slow. We had to cross this giant glacier-ice pack that took forever because it was so slippery. We had crossed it earlier in the way up but we hadn't been able to see how big it really was. However, I was able to take in the beautiful scenery and just enjoy being on this huge mountain that I've now grown to love. I took lots of pictures so enjoy some of my favorites!
Zion National Park
So I hadnt been to Zion's since my junior year of high school, so I didn't really remember how absolutely awesome it was!
The original plan was to go to Havasupai the weekend of August 2nd through the 4th. The morning of the 2nd we were informed that the flooding had been bad there for a couple of weeks, so we turned to plan B, Zion's!
My friends Clark, Matt, and Kaitlin camped just outside of the park at a fairly cheap campsite. However, food wasn't as cheap as we thought it would be so we were pretty discounted to spend so much money at a restaurant nearby. Overall, so happy with the campsite because it had nice showers for free!!!
Friday, we kind of slept in until about 8:30, got ready, and headed to the park. They have these cool shuttle buses for free once you pay to get inside the park ($25 for one vehicle for a 7 day pass! So cheap!) and so we rode those to any trail head we wanted to do. That morning we did the Emerald Pools trail and the Weeping Rock trail, both short but cool trails.
That afternoon, after eating food at the lodge and taking a short rest under the giant tree in front of the lodge, we took the shuttle to the Angel's Landing trailhead. I was so excited for this one, because all I had heard was how amazing it was at the top and how scary it was climbing up. If anyone knows me, they know I love adventure, so naturally I was so stoked for it.
And the top was everything I could have imagined!! The views were breathtaking. You could see the entire park, up both canyons. The river looked like a tiny brown snake, the road was even smaller. Get this, the drop-offs on the sides of Angels Landing is about 1,400 feet. I looked down at one point (while hanging on to the chains that are put there for our safety and my sanity) and I got one of those "holy crap I'm going to die" feelings. It was awesome, ha ha! I couldn't even see the side because it was just a sheer, steep cliff.
A thunderstorm came up on us while we are climbing up, and me being the paranoid person that I am about lightning (I have had too many close calls), I suggested that we hurry to the top and not spend too much time once we got there. The lightning wasn't too close, but it was coming fast. Luckily, it didn't start raining until we were already climbing down. Still sketchy though!
Day 2, we decided to sleep in again (if you could call it that, the ground was hard so there wasn't much sleeping going on) and then set out to do The Narrows. This is only hike I had done back when I went in high school, so I was excited to do it again. When we got there the water was super muddy (we called it Willy Wonkas chocolate river) and the bottom is filled with huge rocks that make it hard to walk in. On this hike you're in the river about 80% of the time, which made for slow going because nobody wants to trip and fall into that river. We hiked upriver for a couple hours until we felt like turning around. It was pretty fun because there was so many people, so crossing the river was like an obstacle course, you had to dodge foreigners and boulders. Speaking of, I feel like we were the only English speaking people there!! So many people speaking different languages, mostly French. We heard that and German, Italian, Spanish, and some Asian languages that I would never know which is which. Haha. The people watching was pretty awesome.
Overall, it was an amazing weekend and so much fun!! Its definitely something I want to do every year. When I drove home on Tuesday, me and my dad (he flew up to drive home with me) drove through Zion's so we could ride the shuttle around, so I could show him all the places we went. We saw a gigantic desert bighorn sheep, we may or may not have started a traffic jam when we stopped to look at it. Haha, whoops!
Well I'm having fun at home so far, I've been on more dates in the past week than I have in Provo the last four months. Crazy, huh? Anyway, pictures from the trip!!
The original plan was to go to Havasupai the weekend of August 2nd through the 4th. The morning of the 2nd we were informed that the flooding had been bad there for a couple of weeks, so we turned to plan B, Zion's!
My friends Clark, Matt, and Kaitlin camped just outside of the park at a fairly cheap campsite. However, food wasn't as cheap as we thought it would be so we were pretty discounted to spend so much money at a restaurant nearby. Overall, so happy with the campsite because it had nice showers for free!!!
Friday, we kind of slept in until about 8:30, got ready, and headed to the park. They have these cool shuttle buses for free once you pay to get inside the park ($25 for one vehicle for a 7 day pass! So cheap!) and so we rode those to any trail head we wanted to do. That morning we did the Emerald Pools trail and the Weeping Rock trail, both short but cool trails.
That afternoon, after eating food at the lodge and taking a short rest under the giant tree in front of the lodge, we took the shuttle to the Angel's Landing trailhead. I was so excited for this one, because all I had heard was how amazing it was at the top and how scary it was climbing up. If anyone knows me, they know I love adventure, so naturally I was so stoked for it.
And the top was everything I could have imagined!! The views were breathtaking. You could see the entire park, up both canyons. The river looked like a tiny brown snake, the road was even smaller. Get this, the drop-offs on the sides of Angels Landing is about 1,400 feet. I looked down at one point (while hanging on to the chains that are put there for our safety and my sanity) and I got one of those "holy crap I'm going to die" feelings. It was awesome, ha ha! I couldn't even see the side because it was just a sheer, steep cliff.
A thunderstorm came up on us while we are climbing up, and me being the paranoid person that I am about lightning (I have had too many close calls), I suggested that we hurry to the top and not spend too much time once we got there. The lightning wasn't too close, but it was coming fast. Luckily, it didn't start raining until we were already climbing down. Still sketchy though!
Day 2, we decided to sleep in again (if you could call it that, the ground was hard so there wasn't much sleeping going on) and then set out to do The Narrows. This is only hike I had done back when I went in high school, so I was excited to do it again. When we got there the water was super muddy (we called it Willy Wonkas chocolate river) and the bottom is filled with huge rocks that make it hard to walk in. On this hike you're in the river about 80% of the time, which made for slow going because nobody wants to trip and fall into that river. We hiked upriver for a couple hours until we felt like turning around. It was pretty fun because there was so many people, so crossing the river was like an obstacle course, you had to dodge foreigners and boulders. Speaking of, I feel like we were the only English speaking people there!! So many people speaking different languages, mostly French. We heard that and German, Italian, Spanish, and some Asian languages that I would never know which is which. Haha. The people watching was pretty awesome.
Overall, it was an amazing weekend and so much fun!! Its definitely something I want to do every year. When I drove home on Tuesday, me and my dad (he flew up to drive home with me) drove through Zion's so we could ride the shuttle around, so I could show him all the places we went. We saw a gigantic desert bighorn sheep, we may or may not have started a traffic jam when we stopped to look at it. Haha, whoops!
Well I'm having fun at home so far, I've been on more dates in the past week than I have in Provo the last four months. Crazy, huh? Anyway, pictures from the trip!!
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