The adventures of a BYU student...

It all began last Friday at work when I got a call from Steve asking me if I wanted to go camping with a bunch of other people from the ward that night at Capitol Reef. Of course I said yes! How could I refuse? That night we headed down to the camp site, which was about a 4 hour drive total, but it was worth it. We had a great night looking up at the stars and throwing anything we could in the fire to make it bigger. The next morning we woke up, and headed straight to Burrow Wash Trail to do this:

We spent about 3 hours hiking into Slot Canyon. We came across so many obstacles that required climbing rocks to get around. One part in particular, you literally had to wedge yourself between the two walls of the canyon and shimmy your way across a large puddle of putrid water. However, I wore shoes that are literally older than my nephew and had no traction on the bottom, and it was impossible for me wedge myself. Steve, still wanting me to continue in our hiking journey, gave me directions to climb up and over the canyon to meet the group on the other side. He told me to back track a little bit and told me to take a right to climb some more rocks to meet him on the other side. I returned to the area he was talking about, but I took the wrong right. When I got about half way up, Steve caught up with me, and I had realized my mistake. As I was climbing back down, I started to slip (due to my shoes lack of traction) and as I leaned back to catch myself, my hand happened to make friends with this plant: 

Yep, you are right. That is a cactus (not the cactus, but the best image I could find using Google, because I forgot my camera). As I started to slip, I leaned backwards, hoping to find a rock to hold on to, but I found a a cactus with my hand instead. I had so many cactus spines in my hand that I spent about 5 minutes trying to pull them all out sitting on the rocks, but I wasn't able to get them all out. I still have some of them in my hand now, because they are so hard to get out. All in all, I had a great time and I really enjoyed getting to know more of the people in the ward.  

The next day, after church, I headed down with the Ficklin family to Lake Powell for the week. The week was full of: swimming, laying out in the sun, reading, eating, wake boarding, tubing, cliff diving, jet skiing, slip-n-sliding, boat riding, playing games, hiking, and sleeping. But at the same time, I didn't do anything, because nothing was required of me, and it was FANTASTIC! I did work on getting an awesome tan that I am proud of! Here are some of the memorable pictures from Lake Powell:

This is known as "Big Sand Hill". Yep, it is a giant hill of sand, and we hiked it to the very top.