Moab and beyond March 2nd-9th

Finally we had arrived in warm weather. Moab was perfect. Great weather, and empty, there were so few people there. Our first few days we rode a trail called Klondike bluffs and baby steps. At the end you could hike into Arches national park. Great views and fun riding.

This is looking into Arches

The clouds were showing off to compete with all the cool rocks

The baby steps trail was mostly singletrack. With all sorts of narrow, curvy technical fun stuff.

This was one of our favorite parts, the trail was very cleverly constructed to go right under this giant mushroom rock.

And there were dino prints too, just right along the trail.

After a few days of riding we decided to let ourselves heal a little bit. We went to a place called wallstreet, where there are these giant cliffs right along the road, and did some rock climbing instead. There wasn't too much in our ability level that we could climb, but what was there was lots of fun.

Hanging out on wallstreet

Big cliff and beautiful blue sky

Itty bitty Emilie

We spent the week camping about 12 miles outside of Moab, on Willow Springs Road. We had a nice pull-off to ourselves and had some great sunset views.

While we were climbing, we noticed another couple there with a very cute dog, and they had mountain bikes on top of there car. We got to talking and decided to go riding together the next day. We did Porcupine Rim, the mountain bike ride of all mountain bike rides, and had a blast.

On the way up

The spectacular view from the top

Everybody at the top: us, Matt and Leigh, and Troy a guy who hooked up with us from Salt lake City (we left Tucker-the dog-in the car)

On the way down

and down...

Matt doing a crazy cool jump

We thought we'd be all full of sunshine and hot weather, but I guess they get storms in the desert too. The scenery was beautiful in a whole new way.

The day after the storm Matt, Leigh, Tucker, and the two of us decided to do slickrock; the other quintessential mountain bike ride of Moab.

One of the many ups- that dog is fast

Tucker and Mike cresting the slickrock

Once again, fantastic scenery

After a great week in Moab, we decided it was time to move on. We decided to do a quick trip through Arches National Park on our way to Albuquerque. Which of course was beautiful.

For all the geologists out there: the Moab fault

I believe this is called Wilson arch, just right along the highway

We also stopped by Mesa Verde National Park, but we didn't get too far up the road. It's 20 miles one way to get to the top and the cliff dwellings, and we were tired of driving all day into the wind, so we didn't make it all the way to the top. The scenery was pretty anyway.

Great clouds as we travelled through New Mexico

Shiprock in the distance

Now the main reason we had up and decided to drive off to Albuquerque was that we had decided it was time for us to get a dog. He is an absolutely adorable fuzzy crazy critter...more (lots more, we can't stop taking pictures of the beast) to come soon.

Driving South

After arriving in Seattle, we were very happy to note that the van started- yay!
But not so happy to note that it needed nearly 900$ of repairs, according to the place we took it to for an oil change- boo!

We called around a few places, and found someplace that could replace a cv boot for much cheaper, so after an evening camped out in a residential neighborhood, and 200$ for a couple of cv boots, we were out of there, out of the constant rain, and gloom that we had flown into. Unfortunately to go south, you had to go up. And when you go up, rain becomes snow. We ended up in a complete white out, and stopped about 20 miles out of Seattle.

At Least it was pretty in the morning

Driving through the snow during the day was a lot easier than at night. Although we did have a close call at Snoqualmie pass, where we decided to try to get gas- at a ski resort. What we didn't realize was as soon as we got of the exit the roads were covered in ice. The vanagon doesn't like ice. Especially when you have to go up hill and turn at the same time- we started sliding sideways, the car in the other lane kept getting closer- Luckily Mike was able to stop us in time, but we were now in the middle of the road, sideways. Some nice friendly snow plow guy, put some dirt under our tires and sent us on our way.

Snoqualmie Pass

One of the negatives of leaving the van in wet and rainy Washington for so long, was that everything was wet and rainy, so everything molded.

Our poor pop-top roof - on the inside

The next days were spent doing a lot of driving. We did a little bit of riding in Kennewick Washington, but it really wasn't very fun- wet and kind of boring. Somewhere along the way, to be honest right now I can't even remember the state, we passed over this great gorge, that was only like 50 feet wide. It was neat cause you didn't see it coming at all.

Big Gorge

Finally when we got into Utah, after Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, it started to warm up a bit.

Driving through Salt Lake City, no wonder they had the Olympics there, look at all those mountains

We decided if the weather was going to cooperate we might as well do a little climbing. We stopped in a little town called Helper UT. Although we were slightly fearful for our lives, some strange looking folks live in Helper, the climbing was pretty good.

and the scenery was fantastic

Next up- adventures in Moab...

Living in the Arctic

Mike and I spent Christmas up in Dubuque.

Merry Christmas

While we were there we figured we might as well tackle a couple of remodeling projects. First came the hallway

Before- we got a little anxious and started pulling wallpaper before we took the picture

After

Along with remodeling, we figured if we are in the Arctic, we might as well entertain ourselves with an Arctic sport.

So we picked up hockey. Mike was much better at it than I, but we had a really good time. Even in the 6 degree weather. We convinced Nyssa to come out and play with us a couple times

Unfortunately this is how it usually ended up

Not that I fared much better, if you notice the amount of snow that I'm wearing

Attempt 1: As part of playing hockey we decided we needed to master the hockey stop- notice Nyssa's jump

Attempt 2: Only slightly more successful, my mom joined in on this one

The final remodeling project was the music room

Before

After

We've decided to get back out on the road- the van was feeling lonely, so we flew out to Seattle on Feb 24th- details of the continuing adventure coming soon...