Sometimes...

...I kind of miss being on the dock at school.

That is all.

All the rooms

I spend excessive amounts of my free time on decorating my room, in part because I have way too much stuff that can possibly fit into it, no matter what size. So I just move it around from wall to wall, and call it 'organizing'.  What follows are some of my college rooms. It's like a game-- can you spot all the same items in different locations in each room?!

First year- Dorm explosion.

Second year- The house on School Street-- my attic cave.

Third year- Prescott semester-- when I didn't bring everything I owned.

Fourth year ish- Tiny cabin on the hill, Calypso Farm in AK.

Fifth year- Cottage Street with slightly less shit.

Not pictured: Pleasant Street room, Cleftstone Room. Don't worry, I still had all of the same things.

This is just to say

I have eaten
the cake
straight out of
the to-go box

from Guapos-
Tres Leches Cake
on my front porch
in the sunlight

it was delicious
so full
of sweet milk
for lunch

Prime Campsites

I've never been one for planning trips in advance (who does that anyway?), so I continued in this fashion and did not plan one bit of the Utah trip, aside from the national parks that I wanted to stop at. While I'm not going to actually recommend this technique to anyone out there planning a trip, it worked out okay for us. We were a group of three who knew nothing about any campsites on BLM land or National Park land. Yet we went camping for five weeks and still had a spot to sleep every night. Here is the highlight picture reel of these campsites:

Campsite: Colorado River Recreation Area site, just outside of Moab

Date: 10/11/2012

Result: Stunningly gorgeous landscape, and incredibly crazy thunderstorm at 5 am.

Campsite: Arches National Park backcountry site @ Clover Canyon

Date: 10/13, 10/14

Results: We Love Clover Canyon, and had it completely to ourselves... Wilderness

Campsite: Cowboy Camp, BLM land by Canyonlands Island in the Sky

Date: 10/15/2012

Result: Stupendous views! No cowboys though.

Campsite: Whistlewind BLM, somewhere towards the Needles District

Date: 10/16/2012

Result: Wish we'd gotten here earlier in the day, but perfect. And a good spot for bucket showers.

Campsite: Canyonlands NP backcountry, Devil's Pocket site

Date: 10/17/2012

Result: High walls and creepy vibes, also cold. But nice meadow in the morning!

Campsite: Canyonlands backcountry, on the slickrock

Date: 10/18/2012

Result: Luv n' it, caught the last of the sun and some sweet moon action.

Campsite: Canyonlands Backcountry

Date: 10/19/2012

Result: Beautiful redrock hike in, found a toad, got pretty creeped out at night.

Campsite: Capitol Reef NP, near Halls Creek Narrows

Date: 10/24/2012

Result: Hard slickrock, the Waterpocket Fold is SWEET

Campsite: Paria River BLM site, cottonwood "grove"

Date: 10/27/2012

Result: So relaxing, laundry in the river, burritos.

Campsite: somewhere in Vermillion Cliffs National Monument

Date: 10/28/2012

Result: Juniper fires and Stickwiththeplan Soup, tryna be like Ed Abbey

There ya go, the unplanned campsites of Utah! Sometimes it works to have no plans or expectations. Then you can be pleasantly surprised to stumble upon the most perfect campsites of all time.

Reminiscing

GUYS I SWEAR I'm going to blog regularly. I know I've said this about four times in the past year, aka everytime I post, but I'm serious this time. This blog post is the jumping point for all my future blog posts about my favorite subject... the past. I spend probably way too much time looking through old pictures and reminiscing to... myself. So I might as well share, is my thought process here.

First up: Utah! I went on a big trip to Utah in the fall of 2012, and I never blogged about it. Blog post or it didn't happen, amirite?

As an overview, I traveled with two recently graduated friends from school, Sarah and Lucy. We started in Salt Lake City and then moved down to Arches, Canyonlands, Goblin Valley, Capitol Reef, Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I won't bore you, dear readers, with too many Utah posts in hopes that I will do exciting things in the PRESENT that I can blog about, but only time will tell.

Here is Growler, our trusty vehicle, taking in the views: