Rocks and Stars

So… I went to Utah for the weekend.
Mind you, this was many weekends ago… I’m just super far behind on my blog posts!
I went with my sister and our friend Jay. We left Loma Linda on Thursday bright and early. After a quick first stop in Vegas for lunch, we drove straight through to our second stop – Arches National Park. We got there about an hour or so before sunset. It was a quick hike to the Delicate Arch, so we decided to catch it before the sun disappeared. It ended up working out great because with the sun going down, the temperature was a lot cooler than the scorching fire that it was earlier in the day. It was still stupid hot though and my back was soaked with sweat by the end of it all. As mentioned, the hike was fairly short (about 90 minutes round trip). We got to the arch right as the sky turned pink. It was gorgeous. Surprisingly, there were still a lot of people there. So a short wait in line and a photoshoot sesh later, we took our dorky photos and headed back to the car. The sky had turned dark on our way back so we had to hike with our flashlights. Thankfully, I brought mine! (Always be prepared!)
After the hike, we headed to our hotel in Moab, where we were going to stay for the next 2 nights. We didn’t really have a plan, but Moab has a ton of options for activities. They have a plethora of fun hikes with amazing views. They have a whole street of various adventure companies that will take you ATVing, rafting, kayaking, canyoning, rock climbing, etc. The initial “plan” was to do a full-day rafting trip on Friday. But the weather report predicted rain all day, so we aimed for Saturday instead. So we decided to just see where the day took us on Friday. In true, Katrina/Amber/Jay fashion, we slept like 14 hours that night and decided to just take it easy on Friday.
I am a firm believer in getting actual rest during a vacation. Don’t get me wrong, I am also a sucker for FOMO (fear of missing out) and always want to be making the most of my time at a place. But sometimes you just need to take a freaking break from life and allow yourself to rest, before you can partake in the fun and excitement of your vacation. It’s all a balance. When we went to Switzerland last year, we slept a good like 12 hours each night for the first 2 days. We only woke up for meals and some slight exploration around our hotel. We did the same on our recent Ireland trip. Slept allllll day the first day and it was glorious. I don’t regret the time spent at all.
Once we finally got out of bed and got ready, we headed out for a late brunch next door (Eklectica Coffee & Collectibles). From there, we went to the bakery across the street (Sweet Cravings) for coffee and goodies. We asked one of the workers for any recommendations of spots to hit that day. She suggested we first go to the visitors center to see all of our options and get maps and such. But personally she recommended Dead Horse Point showing us photos she took just the week before. The views looked amazing, so we agreed to check it out.
Later that evening, we grabbed dinner at the Moab Brewery in town, where we tried some of their homemade beers and vodka (which tasted like straight up water by the way… dangerous). After dinner, we drove out to Dead Horse Point to try and get a hike in before the sun went down. We drove up to the lookout point (which is just a parking lot and a look out). After taking pictures, we tried to follow the map to find a short hiking trail to do. We started on a trail but, less than a half a mile in, the path kind of just disintegrated and we found ourselves wandering around boulders and rocks. Eventually we just gave up on the trail altogether, found a nice spot on the cliff, overlooking the gorge and watched the sun set behind the ridge. After an hour of arguing about song lyrics and stalking a girl’s sunset instagram photoshoot sesh, the sun had completely set and we decided to head out to Island in the Sky to hopefully do some star gazing. It had rained earlier that morning and was supposed to be cloudy all day, but the skies had cleared up quite a bit in the evening, so we were hopeful.
By the time we got there, it was pretty much dark. We used our flashlights to follow the trail a little ways out, then popped a squat in an empty flat area. Jay pointed at the brightest star in the sky and said, “I think that’s the North Star… Yeah, that’s it.”
After staring at it for a while, I tilted my head to the side in confusion and asked, “This may be a dumb question… but doesn’t the sun set in the West?” He did a 180 degree turn to see the last rays of sun setting just opposite of where his “North Star” was located. Placing his “North Star” in the east.
“Wait a minute….”
Then he mumbled and talked to himself like a crazy person for literally 10 minutes. By this time it was pitch black and my sister and I were laying on the rocks counting shooting stars. Jay refused to lay down until he figured it out. Finally he was able to remember how to find the Little Dipper from the Big Dipper, and in turn, the North Star (which was actually in the North this time!). After a while, we decided to head back to the hotel and call it a night.
On Saturday, we had booked a tour with Red River Adventures for canyoneering and water rafting down the Colorado River. We met up at their office early in the morning and they drove us out to somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We all hopped out and hiked to the first descent. Canyoneering is basically just rappelling down into a canyon. I’ve done quite a bit of rappelling with rock climbing, so it was all very familiar. We did 2 rappels. One was 95 feet high and the other was 120 feet high down a land bridge called “Morning Glory”. It was super fun and absolutely beautiful.
After the 2 rappels, we hiked along the stream, back to a meet up point where they had a van ready to take us to the river. At the river, our guides set up a quick lunch for us. We had chips, sandwiches, and cookies. I’m not sure if I was just starving, but it was pretty darn good.
After lunch, we headed down to the river, got suited up with our life jackets, and hit the water.
The “rapids” were mildly exciting, but nothing to write home about. It was more so just relaxing and fun to ride down the river whilst (yeah, I said whilst – I’m bringing it back… pass it on) cracking jokes and enjoying the view of the beautiful red rocks. At the end of the rapids, we parked our boat by the shore and they had a van waiting to pick us up and take us back to the office.
It was a long tiring day, but it was super fun. Our group had a good mix of really cool people and our guides were equally as cool. So the mix of that and all of the exciting activities in a gorgeous national park, made for a pretty solid day.
After getting back to our cars, we said our “goodbyes” to all of our new friends that we most likely will never see again and we grabbed a bite to eat at this BBQ place down the road (Spitfire Smokehouse – per our guide’s recommendation).
Muscles aching and bellies full, we hit the road once again. Next stop – Bryce Canyon National Park for their Astronomy Festival. The drive is about 4 hours long, so I did my best to keep Jay awake with titillating conversation and nerdy podcasts that I had downloaded on my phone (since service was shoddy and I had nothing else downloaded on my phone). Oh my goodness… side note – so we listened to a Star Talk episode about lab-grown meats. You should definitely listen to it. This may be the nutrition nerd in me, but it is SO fascinating. I don’t want to get into it right now, but maybe I’ll devote another post to it in the near future.
Anyway… We arrived at Bryce Canyon around 9ish. We tried to hit one of their evening programs, but got there right when it ended. So we took the shuttle to their Stargazing event. You guys… I cannot gush enough about this. I absolutely recommend this to anyone and everyone. Well maybe it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But it should be. Basically they shuttle everyone out to this field in the middle of nowhere with minimal light pollution. Even at the place, there is no light allowed, so they have red and blue glow sticks and low lights to direct traffic. In the field, there are rows of people with telescopes of all different sizes and types. And all of these telescopes are brought in by volunteers and astronomy enthusiasts (so pretty much, a bunch of old retired white dudes). All of the telescopes are pointed at different things. For example, one was pointed at Jupiter and its moons, one was looking at the moon, one was looking at a neighboring galaxy, one was looking at a pair of binary stars… Everyone got super nerdy with it too. At one point, we were chasing Saturn, so we asked these people in line what they were waiting to see. “Saturn!” they squealed. We all got just as giddy and hopped in line. Only to be joined by a bunch of other nerds who were also super excited about Saturn. Then we spent a good 20 minutes in line talking to strangers about planets and star rotations. On one edge of the field, the park rangers were doing 30 minute “Star Tours” where they would point their super laser pointers at constellations in the sky and tell you the lore and story behind them. They were also there to answer any and all questions that we had – no matter how dumb or smart they were. It was amazing to hear the remarkably smart questions that were coming from some of the kids in the group. There were like 8 year old’s explaining blue giants and supernovae. I mean I have a very basic understanding of astronomy, but these guys had me nodding along pretending like I knew what they were talking about, while furiously taking mental notes on a bunch of things that I needed to google at the hotel later. The experience was all just so beautiful and humbling. Whenever I have a crisis, I oddly find myself delving into astronomy. When the world starts to not make sense and I feel overwhelmed, I look up to the sky. That just makes sense. As crazy and infinite the idea of space is, somehow it just keeps me grounded. In the big scheme of things, we’re all so insignificant and yet we’re all connected. In the words of Carl Sagan, “We are made of star stuff.” These stars and galaxies are all light-years away, and we get to see what they once were. We were literally looking into the past. It’s almost like a secret super power that I don’t know why I don’t use more often… Meanwhile, the aliens could be looking at us from 30 light-years away and I didn’t even exist yet. (If you’re confused, a light-year is the distance that light travels in one year. If something is a light-year away, that means the light takes 1 year to get to us. So if we’re looking at something that is 1 light-year away, we’re actually seeing it as it was 1 year ago. See? Isn’t it all so fascinating??)
The next morning, we packed up our things and headed to our next and final stop – Zion National Park. I drove this time. It was only a 2 hour drive, so it wasn’t too bad. We passed the time listening to campy Broadway musicals and talking about life.
Once we got to Zion, we hopped on the shuttle and headed to the narrows to do a quick hike. We didn’t have a whole lot of time, so we just went as far as we could in a 1 hour time span, then turned around. I love that hike. It’s pretty much this beautiful canyon river that you can wade through for miles. It was stupid hot, so walking through the water was perfect.
After the hike, we ate lunch at the Zion Brewing Company and enjoyed some delicious stout floats before heading to our truly last stop – home. The drive was about 6 hours. I didn’t drive this time, so I took the opportunity to take a nap in the back seat since I had to go to work the next morning.
All in all, it was an extremely solid trip. Rocks, stars, adventures, and hours on hours of musical theater and nerdy podcasts. What more could a girl ask for?

-Kat