Dream beneath a desert sky

Whew. December is off to a busy start. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with work and with life in general right now. Don't expect much blogging from me this month because there are so many other things to finish up before the holidays. I wouldn't be surprised if I don't even touch my video project this month, which is a bummer since I'm getting so dang excited to share it with you.

At least the next few weekends are looking relatively uneventful. Last weekend was sort of our final hurrah before we buckle down and face the weeks before our Christmas vacation in Minnesota. We drove out to Las Vegas to spend Thanksgiving with my grandparents and then up to Zion National Park in Utah for some hiking and camping. If you've been following me on Twitter, Facebook, or email, then this is probably not news to you, but I feel the need to document it here anyway simply because it was such a wonderful extended weekend.

It was pouring rain when we left last Wednesday morning. We cruised across the desert in an unexpected fog, arriving on my grandparents’ place mid afternoon. That evening the four of us hit a buffet, where I showed great restraint and managed to avoid getting the hiccups! It occurred to me while I was there that the first time I ever got what I call the "Killer Hiccups" was after eating at a buffet during my last visit to Vegas (I was thirteen or fourteen at the time). At the wise old age of 29 I finally overcame them by simply not eating so much. I wanted to stay at the top of my game when it came to playing computerized BINGO. That's right -- they have machines that do all of the work for you now. The numbers are still read aloud, but there’s no need to daub cards with ink anymore. Your only responsibility as a player is to yell the word when the machine tells you that you won. So in our case, we had no responsibility at all. Oh well, it was fun to get an inside perspective of my grandparents' night life. They appear to be some sort of BINGO royalty at Boulder Station.

The next day was Thanksgiving. My grandma made a turkey and all of the fixings, and it was very tasty. I was glad to be with family after spending the holiday alone last year. After dinner and some good old-fashioned relaxing, R and I went off to explore the city. This was her first time seeing The Strip and it had been 15 years for me. The place has changed a lot and so has my perspective. We walked a long way, in and out of casinos, stopping in a few shops and for a drink in the Eiffel Tower. Of course we had a good time, but after seeing this town that is all surface we couldn’t help but appreciate the real Eiffel Tower or the real New York City or the real Michelangelo’s paintings more. Maybe that’s the point of Vegas. The façade itself is impressive, but it leaves me with a sleazy, empty feeling. It's a good place for wild night life, but as you all must know, that's not really what I'm looking for.

We got up on Friday and drove northeast to Zion National Park in Utah. Ideally we would have had enough time to see Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon as well, but Zion was plenty for two days. It’s quite a spectacular place, a deep canyon carved out of sandstone. Camping was cold, but we had a couple of fires and bundled ourselves up pretty well inside our sleeping bags. We took three separate hikes, the highlight of which involved following a narrow spine with 1500 foot cliffs on both sides to Angels Landing. It was a little daring and quite outstanding. We really fell in love with the park. The only disappointing aspect was high volume of people present over the long weekend. It’s hard to revel in the glory of a landscape when there are screaming kids on the trail ahead of you or a big group of people rushing you out of the way so they can get a photo in front of the vista on which you are gazing.

Check out our photo gallery from the trip. We took 350 shots, kept 150, and posted 80. Many of the shots were scrapped because the light had either too harsh a contrast or was too dim. An improperly exposed sky or a little unwanted blur is sometimes (but not always) enough for me to hit the delete button. But I guess it works out because if I posted a gallery of more than 80 photos, it would be too overwhelming for anyone to view entirely anyway. If I made you wade through a bunch of garbage, you'd surely miss the few decent shots. That's the value of editing.