Sedona and the Grand Canyon

Soooo, what a weekend!

I flew out of work at 3pm on Friday and headed for the airport, the flight into Phoenix was right on time, excellent flight, no problems or anything! Got my rental car and headed out for Sedona. After driving through lots of random construction and lots of winding back roads I found the camp ground around 9:30ish. Laid out my sleeping bag and went to bed. Got up early the next morning and headed out to Slide Rock where they were having this crazy Apple Festival. It was alright. Not exactly what I was expecting and the trails there were only about half a mile long. So I made my own off roading trails and did some bouldering up to the top of the rocks which was lots of fun! Getting down was not so much fun! lol. Hung out at the festival for a little bit and then headed off to Red Rock Canyon.

Red Rock canyon was really very neat, though again there were only about 5 miles of trails. I did the longest trail which was about 3 miles and had enough of that so I headed back into town to explore the touristness of Sedona, AZ. I have to say that I was not impressed by the town of Sedona, there’s way to much touristy shit. And the Pink Jeep and competitors are EVERYWHERE! I stopped into the tourist information booth and asked the guy where a good place to watch the sunset was at. He told me to just drive up to the Airport and watch it from there. I told him that I didn’t want to just drive somewhere and that I wanted to hike somewhere. He said “I wouldn’t suggest that, It’s too dangerous.” You know that once you say that I just have to do that, so I pressed him for some good hiking because the shit I had been told about sucked. He finally coughed up this great hike to Cathedral Rock but he said, “It’s way to dangerous to do today.” BAH! I headed out after that and did another short hike where I got rained on. I love mountain weather!

From there I headed off to the Cathedral Rock hike. It’s only a half mile, but it’s a VERY steep half mile hike and WELL worth every effort. I basically ran up the whole thing bouldering and stuff up the side of this mountain. Got up to the top and it was just AMAZING! So beautiful, I wish that they hadn’t ruined such a wonderful place with so many stupid fat American tourists. Watched the sunset and ate a PB&J and then headed down. Going down was just as much fun as going up, and this time I folloed the trail, so not as much rock hopping was needed.

Headed back into town and found this place that was EXACTLY like Panera Bread, but it was called “WildFlower Bread Company”. Got a salad and sat and used the internet for a while then headed back to the camp site and crashed for the night. I had a different camp site this time with a CLEAR view of the sky. Absolutely amazing! You could see all the stars and the milky way and everything. Breathtaking! I laid there for a bit watching the stars and then fell asleep. Around 11ish or so the moon came out from behind the mountians and woke me up because it was so bright! I got a little chilly that night, but after zipping up the wonderful new 0 degree sleeping bag I was nice and toasty! 🙂

Woke up Sunday morning early and headed out for the grand canyon. I got up to Flagstaff and all the tourist information things were closed. So I called some LA people to try and figure out what was going on. I found this great place called “Sunset Crater and Wupatki”. It was a really great drive through the country side and you got to see this really neat lava flow and old volcano, etc. After that you drive about 20 miles and you get to see these really neat old Adobe houses from the Wupatki Indians. Very very neato! After those I headed into the Grand Canyon, checked out my camp site and then did some Rim hiking and took a trail down into the canyon for about a mile.

I headed back up to watch the sunset which the paper said was at 6:30. I find a great location to watch it about 5:30 and decided to just sit and wait instead of running off to find somewhere else. Last time I was the canyon for a Rim sunset there were 8 million tourists who ruined the great spot I had found before.

So I sit there and 6:30 comes around and the sun was still WAY up in the sky, I was getting very confused by this point. Lots of other people started gathering and finally at 7:30 the sunsets! Apparently I had no idea all weekend what time it really was, oh well. Also there was this REALLY cute Australian boy doing a filming about the sunset and one of the great wonders of the world. Some stupid asian walked right infront of his Camera as he was taking video of the sunset and he yelled at him, it was so funny! There was also this asian sitting next to me, wearing a beanie, hoodie, and a big furry coat! It wasnt that cold! I was there in a t-shirt and shorts! Crazies.

I hiked back to the camp site making a stop off at the General store and bought a Grand Canyon patch. Crawled into my sleeing bag and had another amazing open sky view! I just can’t describe it!

Woke up the next morning and had 2 voicemails and an email from work… I called them back and found out that the email server had crashed. I also had this voicemail/email from one of the really annoying guys at work. “My email doesn’t work.”… I assumed that fixing the first problem would fix his problem. But I called him bak just to be sure. He didn’t answer and I left a VM. I started heading back to Phoenix after that because I could just tell this was going to be a disaster. He called me back while I was pooping so I didn’t answer. then called him RIGHT back and he didn’t answer AGAIN so I left a VM. A couple minutes later I get an email from the boss man saying that this needs to be fixed ASAP, blah blah blah. Ugh. So I call the guy back again and he answers.. His problem.. The signature at the bottom of his emails are not showing up! WTF!?!?!? Are you fucking kidding me!? So I have him transfer me to the boss man and I yell at him about that. UGH. Fucking annoying.

Got back to Phoenix and came to the hotel. Have been hanging out with Mark and all the other gay nerds. So many iPhones! And who knew there were so many gay nerds! And some of them are actually CUTE! lol.

Other Drama regarding Jason/Steve/Const and Mike. Not really going to get into it here, but I feel it’s the last straw between Jason and I. And he wonderes why our friendship has been going downhill. It’s because of shit like this. First Erick/Kris shit now Const/Mike stuff. I can’t deal with it. Whatever happened to loyal friends.

The conference is really cool so far. I’ve learned so much already and had tons of fun last night with the guys. I’ve even met some great guys from Argentina and Peru who can help me out down there with stuff.

Lone Pine Trip

This weekend was very long and yet tons of fun!

Friday I got up early and headed out to Pasadena to pick up this guy Jimmy, from there we headed up to Canyon Country to meet up with George, Jason, Merot and Lewis. Headed from there up to Red Rock Canyon. Hung out there for a little bit and did some running around. Nothing to crazy.

My big ass Rock climbing.After that we drove from there up to Fossil Falls for some rock climbing. We setup up at the top of the canyon and then rappelled down. I did some pretty good climbing, I was very impressed with myself. One of the climbs that I did you had to climb up to this small ledge about 15 feet off the ground, and then the rock comes out over your head. You have to put your hand in this little slot in the rock and make a fist to lock it in there, then pull yourself up while trying to get your feet into this tiny hole that was about waist level. From there you have to get both your hands up over this rock and then pull yourself the rest of the way up. I made it up that, but fell just as I was trying to make the last move to get my feet up on top of the ledge. 🙁 It was our last climb, so I’m very impressed I even made it that far.

From there we headed out to this place called Dirty Sock. It was this very interesting hot spring pool out in the middle of no where. It was really weird because when we would throw in a rock, it would bubble and create this neat fizzing sound. After that we headed up to Lone Pine and at dinner at this little cafe and then went to the GHETTO hotel. There were 6 people in our one room.

Saturday we got up at 5am and started a 13 mile hike across the desert! We started in a little town called Keeler, CA and then hiked somewhere between 10 and 13 miles across the salt flats/desert/swamp to get back towards Lone Pine. It was a lot of fun to do and not as hard as I thought it would be. The weather was wonderful. There were these two little kids with us who were lots of fun, but they were very slow so I stayed back with them for a little bit and sang old scouting songs with them and told stories. Sadly I can’t remember any of the good scouting songs any more so that didn’t last very long.

From there we headed up to the Obsidian Domes up by Mammoth lakes. On the way there we stopped at Erick Schats that was kind of hard for me up there because that was the bakery that Constantine and I stopped at on our way back from Mammoth Lakes, and played a big part in my realization that I loved him… It was there, at that bakery that I looked at him and said to myself. “Oh my god, I love this guy.” … Ugh. Anyways, there was lots of snow on the domes which was fun!

Lone Pine Hot CreekWe headed down from there and went to this place called Hot Creek sadly it was closed currently to swimming, but it was still very pretty. Wish we could have got in.

That night we to this crazy party in a small town called Darwin. It was very strange and very scary. Everyone was wearing these weird ass costumes and shit. I felt like we were going to be killed!

After that I drove back to the hotel and hung out with Alisa, Edder and Matt for a while and we had a drink. Went to bed and got up at 6am to drive back. We did a lot of random driving to strange places. We stopped somewhere that morning, but I can’t remember exactly where, drove through Trona and then stopped at a tiny little ghost town run by these two crazy hicks. They let the children shoot black powder rifles. They also had what they claimed was Charles Manson’s old truck. Stopped off in Atolia as well which was fun, but they put up fences around everything since the last time Constantine and I were there. So that’s sad.

Overall it was a really great trip and I’m really glad that I went.

In sad news though, Tuxedo is missing. He’s been gone since Friday Morning for sure, but maybe even since Thursday afternoon. I left my door open while I was packing up my car. I do this a lot, and have never had problems before. Friday morning I went to say goodbye to my kitties and couldn’t find him anywhere! I spent nearly 30 minutes outside calling for him and looking for him, but I just don’t know where he is at. 🙁 I am hoping that he’ll come back. I have put food out and will be putting up posters later today.

I stayed home from work this morning and am working from home. I’m also watching this movie Wild Tigers I have Known. I KNOW that I’ve seen this movie before, but I cannot remember where or who I saw it with. Very annoying.

So that’s about it.

You can download the tracks with pictures of the weekend for google earth here. I’ll update this post when the pictures are all uploaded as well.
UPDATE:// Photos are now posted on the photodump.

Adios.