Okay, that title might not be super shocking, since I’ve been blahblahblahing about how we went to Utah, but eventually we did come back and I think it’s important for the overall narrative structure of the blog that I recognize that. Home again, home again, jiggity jig!

Last day on the river, and, probably not surprisingly, I’m kinda in the mood to just get this blogging thing over with. Last day on the river, then we got lost driving to SLC because we didn’t bother looking up directions beforehand or pay attention to the directions that were given to us by the dude at the gas station. All’s well that ends well, however. We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. Thanks, Brett.

Oh. We also took a cool side hike in the morning up a creek bed to some beautiful pools. The bottom part of the creek bed was super muddy- Dad and I both got up past our knees in the muck. Kinda gross.

Yo. So today and then two mroe days as we’ve got a ball game. I mean, then there won’t be any more photos, and I Can start posting photos from my last week of excitement, sitting around my apartment reading magazines. I don’t have a lot of awesome pics from this day because it was on this day that we went though all the rapids, thus splashing and water and no camera, right. Which is a shame because it was a pretty cool day.

The highlight was when our boat rescued another boat stuck in some rapids. The other boat had gotten flipped on its’ side right in the middle of the river on a rock, and the three passengers were just stuck there, hanging out. So we cruised up, threw various ropes back and forth and shuttled passengers and belongings from one boat to the other. The happened to be a dude on a kayak who was super trained in water rescue stuff who paddled right up to the crash and somehow landed his kayak on a rock right next to the crash site. That dude was an all-star and was a lot of help with the strategizing and rope-throwing and whatnot. Anyhow, eventually e tied a rope to the frame of the boat, pulled hard, and it popped off. Yahoo. Dragged the boat to shore, had lunch, moved on.

Later in the day, the same all-star kayak dude and his buddies were resting on the side of the river at one point where the river was super wide, the current was super slow, and the headwind was super strong. Since we’re not suckers and our boat had a motor, we weren’t too bummed by those circumstances. Anyhow, cause we’re cool dudes (I guess?) we let all the kayakers with their supply rowboats tie on to our boat and we all went downriver together.

That night we were supposed to sleep in Dark Canyon, but instead we opted for “Gross muddy place.” That’s not its official name, but it was gross and muddy. It had previously been the bottom of the river, but hadn’t been for awhile, to the ground was all parched and cracked and tiled-looking, and I was convinced giant bugs were going to crawl from the cracks and eat us in the night. And this is after three days where I’d been relatively normal about bugs. Creepy.

We had birthday cake cause it was one dude’s birthday (happy birthday, dude!) That was pretty good.

You guys. Day 4. River, hike, river. Food, hiking, river, sunscreen, etc. Actually this day was particularly cool because at one point the river takes a sharp bend and we got off the boat at the start of the sharp bend and caught the river on the other side of the little mountain and got back in. i really wanted to take a photo of both sides of the river with the mountain in the middle, but it turns out my camera can’t actually do that. But let’s get real: you’re really here for the dumb captions.

ALRIGHT! Third day of the trip, we finally get on the river. The boat we’re on is pretty big. I mean, huge. Biggest thing on the river by far. So it was pretty comfy. Other than the three of us, there were two guides and eight other passengers (another group of three, a group of four, and a dude by himself.) We drove about twenty minutes or so to the place where the boat went in the water, then hopped on and started a-raftin’. The plan every day was pretty much to float for awhile, stop for lunch, float for awhile, stop for the night. Floating was interspersed with stops to go swimming and hiking. Anyhow, the pictures!

OMG it’s already day two! Okay. So we left the ol’ Purple Sage Motel (which was great, despite not being able to lock our door) and got dinner at the Flying Somethingorother Cafe in town. The town, you recall, is Panguitch. Breakfast was super good. Then we drove down to Zion National Park, saw the sites, took some photos, lost our binoculars, watched a movie, then headed out to Moab to get ready for the trip.

View We Went to Utah! Day 2 in a larger map
We almost ran out of gas somewhere in the middle of nowhere, which was an exciting addition to some otherwise kinda lackluster central Utah landscapes. Unfortunately, I don’t recall what we had for lunch. Zion was beautiful, as my pictures probably don’t demonstrate. We got to Moab, had a little meeting with our rafting posse, then ate at Moab’s best sushi place. No natto, unfortunately, but the veggie options were still pretty tasty. Pop convinced me to buy a really ugly, but functionally appropriate hat.

The local Maverik gas station is apparently the cool hang out spot for probably-on-meth high school students. We hung out there for like twenty minutes while Pop bought three bottles of water. All the hs kids were there, hanging out, buying beer, twitching, probably buying drugs from one particularly cool looking dude. It was a scene! And.. we went to bed early, cause we had an early morning. Photos.