Manifest Destiny: The Vacation

Hello, lovely readers!  It's been a bit of a week, to say the least.  I know there's been a bit of radio silence on this here blog for the past couple of weeks, but I promise I'm back with a doozy of a post!  It's a bit of a rule breaker, especially since this is a blog about working at a camp, but I figured that this not only feeds into the work that I do, but also maybe made me a better employee for the future.  This is the tale of my spring break trip to the Old West.

Sometimes, things just work out perfectly.  I actually wasn't planning on going on this trip.  I wasn't planning on doing any trips whatsoever.  I had told myself that as a fledgling adult, I had to get used to the "adult" schedule which very much did not include a spring break.  The opportunity came up, and I said no.  Work was too important, it wasn't a great use of my vacation days, and I didn't think that I was physically in a place where I would be a great asset to the trip.  Christmas break came, and the opportunity came up again, this time with a more forceful voice: that of one of my best friends.  None of the excuses that I tossed out were deemed acceptable, and I found myself talking to my parents and my boss about potentially missing a whole week of work just to run out west and go hiking.  They all not only said yes, but they all thought that this trip was an amazing idea and I would be wasting a perfectly good chance by not going.  So, I was set to go to Zion and the Grand Canyon for Spring Break.  We piled into a couple of cars and made the day-long (literally) drive to Utah.

Zion
Our first stop on the trip was Zion National Park, in the very southern part of Utah.  This was a brand-new park for me, and one which I didn't really know a lot about.  We got out of the car and headed straight for Angels Landing, which is probably the most famous trail in the park.  It's a cool trail, and a wonderful example of just how awful switchbacks are.  For the uninitiated, switchbacks are sections of trail joined by hairpin turns.  These are built not only to prevent erosion, but to allow for a greater elevation gain in a smaller area, like this:

That would be the view on the way down Angels Landing.  It's a pretty short hike, but the elevation change is pretty intense.  Not only that, but the last half mile goes along a ridge on a very narrow path that is scattered with chains which are meant to offer a little support along the way.  Scout's Landing is considered to be the turnaround point if trusting metal chains isn't really your cup of tea.  This is probably a good place to remind all of you that I'm terrified of heights.  Not in a "ooh, I'm kind of uncomfortable because we're 3,000 feet in the air" kind of way, but more of a "I am going to cry and/or be sick if I get too high off the ground" way.  It's not pretty, and it can be a bit of a struggle when you're, say, walking up a canyon wall.  I did a lot of research on this trail before this trip, and I knew that I would be pushing some major boundaries of my ability to deal with heights by doing this hike.  I made myself the deal that I would make it to Scout's Landing, with the option to continue on to Angels Landing if I felt comfortable.  I did make it to Scout's Landing, thankyouverymuch, and I quickly understood that Angels Landing was not going to be a real possibility for me.  The view from Scout's Landing is gorgeous, and I was able to chillax on a very comfy rock while the rest of my lovely crew kicked butt and scaled some rocks 'n' chains.

Before I finish talking about this lovely hike, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a little spot on the trail called Walter's Wiggles.  It's an adorable name for a ridiculous portion of trail that makes you want to cry because it's toward the top of the trail and made up of 21 short switchbacks.  

Just look at them.  They make me groan just from the picture.  After we finished the hike, we headed back to our campground to eat and get ready for the next day. Evening came, and morning followed - the first day.

Day Two of our Zion adventure would contain two hikes: Observation Point and Hidden Canyon.  In case you're curious, every single hike that we did in Zion falls into the "Strenuous" section of the trail guide.  There's also this super cute picture next to all of our trail descriptions of a guy falling off of some rocks, which is always reassuring.

Observation Point starts off with some switchbacks, obviously, and then wraps around and through a canyon until you get to a stunning view of the entire canyon valley.  There are some pretty cool parts, like a really cool slot canyon that offers a lot of shade and there's the incredible view from the top, but there are some not so fun parts too, like some switchbacks near the top that promise a several hundred foot sheer drop if you slip (shoutout to pure fear-fueled adrenaline for getting me through that section), and no way to see the top until you're basically there, so it's hard to track your progress if you've never been there before.  

Hidden Canyon has the same trailhead as Observation Point, so we just backtracked down our first trail and headed over to the second one.  There, I was met with my old friend, the chains.  It was at this point that I realized just how tired and shaky I was, which did not really mesh well with narrow trails and chains, so I took another opportunity to chill and just soak up some sun.  Once we had finished both hikes, everyone decided that the perfect remedy for a long hiking-filled day was pizza and beer.  It was definitely well-earned.  And delicious.

Evening came, and morning followed - the second day.

The third day was our inter-park travel day.  The absolute best part was that we had to drive through the whole of Zion to head toward Arizona.  There is nothing so peaceful as rolling through a gorgeous park on a beautiful day, feeling the wind on your face and being continually awestruck by every successive rock formation.  We also got to see mountain goats!  So cool!  

Grand Canyon

We rolled into the Grand Canyon that night with just enough time to go visit the rim before sunset.  Now, the Grand Canyon is intensely special to me, and I don't often talk about it to people.  I think the Grand Canyon gets too built up for people and their experiences then become disappointing, so my seemingly overexuberant love can seem a little over-the-top.  The Grand Canyon isn't just my favorite place for what it looks like, but because of my experiences there.  During my first visit to the Grand Canyon five years ago, I wasn't in a great place.  I had just graduated from high school only a couple of weeks beforehand, and two days before that, my grandpa had died.  I was grieving, stressed about what college would hold, worried about my fitness going into this trip out West, and just completely and totally exhausted, both physically and emotionally.  I almost didn't go to the Canyon five years ago.  I thought it was more important to stay with my family, to be there for them.  My parents were the ones who convinced me that I needed this for myself.  So I went.  I would love to say that I blossomed on that trip, that I experienced a metamorphosis of self, that I was cured of all worry by the Arizona red dirt, but that wouldn't be true.  I was still full of grief and worried about college, but I realize now that my healing really began with the Grand Canyon.  If God could create this wonder and yet still consider me to be a greater creation, then I had a personal responsibility to become my best self, to be the person that I was in God's eyes.  And that's really hard.  It's been five years, and I'm still working towards that goal, and I don't know if it can ever truly be accomplished.  But I'm trying.  And that's why I was excited to go back, because it would be a way to measure just how much I have changed.

It's still gorgeous, of course.  I find that one of the most reliable ways to get me to cry is to put me in front of some awe-inspiring nature.  We headed back to camp, preparing for a hike that terrified me more than I let on to anyone.  Evening came, and morning followed - the third day.

I didn't sleep well that night.  I woke up far too early, and found myself alternating between stress and prayer.  I was about to undertake a hike that I doubted that I was ready for, something that I had always wanted to accomplish, but seemed overwhelming now that the day had arrived.  I was going to hike the Rim to River to Rim in one day, and the only ways to complete it were to find the strength to crawl out of the canyon or die.  At the trailhead, there are numerous signs warning against doing this hike in one day, and as a rule-follower from way, way back, ignoring that sign and doing it anyway was probably rougher than it should have been.

We started as the sun rose.  That sunrise filled me with peace, and we continued down, down into the canyon, all the while remembering that for every step we took down, we would have to come up the same distance.  I got to see the Colorado River for the first time, to put my hands in it, and then we started the long, long walk up.

To be blunt, it sucked.  The rim of the canyon was a lovely 60 degrees or so, but the bottom of the canyon was closer to 90.  We perfectly timed our hike so that we began the upward journey just as the sun was at its most oppressive, and we found out that we hadn't quite come during the season of the seasonal water at the rest houses.  We were slow.  We could not see the end, but we knew that we had to keep walking anyway.  This song kept popping into my head

As we got nearer and nearer the top, we began meeting more and more people who had only come down the trail a few miles.  I found an unladylike amount of joy and smugness in their reactions as we told them that we were coming from the river, that this was the final part of a day long journey.  We knew that there was an ice cream shop at the top of the trailhead, and it served as a large part of our motivation: if you die, you don't get ice cream.  We walked.  We paused.  We groaned as more switchbacks were laid out above us.  And still we kept going.  And we finished it.  18 miles of trail, more than a mile of elevation from bottom to top, and a little less than 11 and a half hours meant that I had completed the most physically demanding thing that I had ever undertaken in my entire life.  I was tired, and exhausted, and hot, and hungry, but I was one thing above all of that: proud.  2012 Lauren couldn't have done that hike.  I had conquered something that felt unconquerable, finished something that most people thought I couldn't finish.  And that made every other ache and pain seem secondary.  I was reminded of an iconic line.

I could not help but smile.  I did it!  We ate dinner, we laughed for hours around the campfire, and we gazed at the stars.  Evening came, and morning followed - the fourth day.

The next day, we left the Grand Canyon.  I left with some sadness, but mostly I left with a feeling of accomplishment.  We were then faced with a lovely road trip home, one filled with gorgeous sunsets and a beautiful Texan sunrise, with midnight IHOP and Whataburger, with slaphappy laughing fits and deafening sing-alongs.  As we rolled into Indianapolis around midnight, I felt that bittersweet feeling that happens when you have to leave a group of people that have helped you to create some incredible memories.  The memories are always there, and so are the people, but we can never replicate that trip again.  And I wouldn't want to.  Because it was perfect in its imperfection, beautiful in its uniqueness, and enjoyable in its aches.  And she looked around and saw that it was all good.

TL;DR - Spring Break was #shlit

The Hikes

Angels Landing

• length - 5 miles
• elevation change - 1,488 feet

Observation Point/Hidden Canyon

• length - 11 miles
• elevation change - 3,100 feet

Rim to River to Rim

• length - 18 miles
• elevation change - 1 mile down, 1 mile up

The Little Things - the moments that make things memorable

• blasting the High School Musical soundtrack while driving through Albuquerque (an obvious choice)
• eating camp chicken tacos together our first night at the Grand Canyon, preceded by camp grace
• looking at stars/watching for satellites
• #gottabeventi is the carpe diem of our time
• becoming the proud owner of a Grand Canyon dirt tan
• playing My Cows and Watertower 
• plotting to steal rocks and/or restaurant signs