The Adventures of Kinky Reggae: A Vagabond for Beauty

This canyon was like a ride at Disney World; I never wanted it to end, and it was over too soon. Tom found a gopher snake on the way in… It bit him just moments after this picture was taken. I borrowed a wetsuit from Kristin and accidentally put it on backwards… Jason kept referring to it as my leisure suit. That zipper definitely inched its way south a few times; on one rappel, Jason yelled at me, “This is a family canyon, Erin! Keep it clean!” I looked down and realized my chest was fully exposed. But I was wearing a sports bra, so at least it wasn’t completely humiliating. This was one of the first rappels, and I was a little nervous since I hadn’t done this in a while. I yelled down for a belay, and Jason grabbed the rope. Right in the middle of the rappel, as I was being pounded by water, Jason pulled the rope so I couldn’t move. It was awful; I couldn’t breathe. He was yelling at me, but I didn’t hear the “Say you’re sorry!” part. All I heard was,

This was the weekend where nothing went as planned, and that was all right. The night before we left, Laura and I completely changed our destination. We decided to head up to Page and hike to Starlight Canyon. I saw that it was supposed to be warm in Page, but I thought the trailhead was at a higher elevation. I was wrong. (Crazy beautiful rocks near the old Pareah townsite... Purple and blue stripes!) We got out of the car and realized we'd be miserable. And this was not exactly a short hike. We weighed our options and decided on hiking the Narrows at Zion- a nice, cool canyon with lots of water. This also worked out well because some of my friends were at Zion for a backpacking trip. We all met up at Pizza Noodle and camped together that night. The next morning I realized I was missing a shoe. How on earth did I lose a hiking shoe? The only thing I can think of is that I left it at the trailhead for the first hike. But this was a problem because no way was I hiking 10 miles