Arches and Canyonlands, April 2003

As soon as our first semester of married life at BYU ended, we high-tailed it south for three days to explore Arches and Canyonlands. 

One item of note: we did not have a camping reservation and it was HOT. Neil assured me that this would be no problem, we would just camp up in the Manti-LaSal Mountains and it would be nice and cool. 

So we drove up into the mountains and it WAS nice and cool, but guess what, it was too early in the season for the campgrounds to be open!! But we did spot this very cool Model T and Neil got a picture with it (and I cut off his head). You can also spot our beloved Grand Cherokee in the right corner...

So we drove around forever trying to find a place to camp around Moab, along the river, etc. It was hotrod weekend so everything was packed and there were a million people!



So we ended up dispersed camping on BLM land, I remember we drove sooooo far out into the dunes and I was really worried that someone was going to drive over our tent in the night. I was also very stressed about the bathroom situation and only wanted to use the bathrooms in Moab, which was a good 60-90 minutes away, so...it was not my favorite night. I remember we couldn't make a fire since we were dispersed camping so we just sort of heated up hot dogs in a pot and then went to bed. 

The next day was more fun, it was still sooooo hot so we did the walk out to Landscape Arch...

(If you told 19-year-old me that the next time I'd be back here would be in 20 years with my 6 kids, I would have thought you were crazy. Actually probably not because that first year we talked about wanting six kids.) 



Then we went to Delicate Arch. 

I just remember being sooo soooooooo soooooooooo hot and lying down on that big stretch of slickrock to take a break (like Matty did on our trip there last year!) 

Here's Neil at the same point, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. 

We drove around Arches for awhile but it was already too hot to do much more hiking (although I'm curious how 2023 me would feel about this, maybe the same? But probably I would be wearing shorts and a tank top and not trying to rock cropped pants and an elbow-length shirt). And where is our water?! And snacks?!!! No wonder I didn't want to hike longer. (Oh wait, I scrolled up and we did have a backpack. Not as dumb as I thought we were.) 

Here's Neil at Parade of Elephants! 

In the afternoon we went over to Canyonlands and Neil had the time of his life driving the Shafer Trail, I just thought we were going to die at any second and concentrated on not throwing up. (Neil used to loooooove to go off-roading and I was, at best, a terrified white-knuckle companion who was perpetually convinced the car was going to tip over backwards.) 

But it's sure beautiful there!!!

Then we drove back towards Moab, stopped in Castle Valley, stopped at Matrimony Springs to fill our water bottles, and then hit the Pizza Hut in Price because that's what Neil's family always did (the one and only time we've ever stopped at Pizza Hut on a road trip). 

It was a fun first camping trip together and we learned a ton!!! (BOOK YOUR CAMPSITE IN ADVANCE, which was a theme for our 2003 summer and a mistake we've never made again since.)

 

Mirror Lake

This batch of photos is from two trips--one in 2003 and one in 2004. The first four are film from a trip Neil and I took together. I remember being SO insanely cold on this trip; it snowed a ton and I was shaking so much all night I really didn't sleep well!



So many fun adventures with this tent but let me just say, it does NOT fit 6'5" Neil unless he is diagonal...which isn't very fun if you're sharing a tent! 



Here's a couple photos Neil took of me. I was still 19 at the time which is really crazy for me to think about (barely a year older than Abigail). 



And this is from a trip we took with my parents, sisters, and a lot of my dad's extended family. My dad had a fancy new digital camera which I thought was soooo cool. 



At the time this photo was taken I was about 6 weeks pregnant with Abigail; I think we'd just found a few weeks before. So exciting!

Beautiful Mirror Lake!

And a photo with all five of my sisters and my dad! 

 

Wind Cave & Mt Rushmore

I legit cannot believe I found these photos, but here they are! I'm going back to old pre-blog photos, digging through film prints, and working to find all the pictures from the first year we were married. 

Neil and I were married over Christmas break in 2002 (and went on our honeymoon to Bear Lake/Jackson Hole; I'll dig those photos out too). When we got our very first tax return in February of 2003, we got about $300 and used all of it to buy a tent, two sleeping bags, and a Coleman stove (which is the stove we still use today 20 years later--it's going strong! We still have the tent and sleeping bags too). 

We went on three camping trips that summer--we went to Arches & Canyonlands at the end of spring semester, then the Uintas one weekend in May, and then drove across the country for a family reunion with his family in Missouri and mine in Michigan. Then on the way back we stopped at Mt. Rushmore, Wind Cave, and Yellowstone. 

I had no idea that we actually had photos from Wind Cave, but WE DO!! Both of us were so surprised when we found this photo Friday night! So here is 23-year-old Neil in our third national park that we visited together (there was a photo of me too, but it was totally black behind me and you couldn't tell that we were anywhere interesting). 

We did not have the money to pay the parking fee in Mt. Rushmore (I think it was like...$10? And apparently we'd really splashed out on Wind Cave tickets) so we parked at a pullout viewpoint and then walked all the way back up the road into the actual monument part. Good times. Can you see Washington's nose at the top of the picture? 

Here's Neil pointing just in case you missed it. 

One of the things I remember most vividly about this day is that it was the Sturgis Motor Rally that weekend and everything was booked. Just totally crazy and we couldn't find a campsite anywhere! I remember we checked sooooo many sites and everything was booked, we finally found a site around 2 am and set up our tent on the gravel right behind our car (and I remember just brushing my teeth at the campsite because I was too tired to walk to the bathroom). We had a couple of experiences with campsites that first year that stressed me out SO much and now that I'm recording this I realize that's probably why I am so obsessive now about making sure that we have a site booked months in advance and never leave anything to chance! That may be a common theme in these posts. ;-)