Jeff and I spent a recent weekend adventuring around Moab and the surrounding area and now I finally have time to write about it...

Jeff has been taking every opportunity to increase his altitude in preparation for an upcoming trip to Peru, in which he is planning on backpacking to Machu Pichu, so he wanted to hike Arches. I never need any excuse or reason to hike anything, so in keeping with my goal of hiking as many summits and mountain ranges as possible this summer, I was all over the idea. However, there was a tragedy on the way down. Ricky the Raccoon decided that Jeff's bumper wasn't messed up enough....may he rest in peace. Poor Ricky.

Those snow-capped mountains in the background are the La Sal Mountains. La Sal is Spanish for "the salt."

This was my first time to Arches since I was a kid and I was completely fascinated with the endless variety of geological formations, especially the bowl-shaped area around Delicate Arch. It was absolutely amazing...I have seen that Arch my entire life, on billboards and license plates and such, but it only now began to mean something to me. You really just have to hike up to it and stand underneath of it to see what I mean.

We hiked all over the place, from Delicate Arch to The Windows to Devil's Garden. Took a lot of pictures. Got really tired of stupid, loud, obnoxious tourists (mainly of the grumpy, inconsiderate, phone-obsessed, teenage variety.)

I accidently had my camera set on the wrong settings for the entire first day, so a whole slew of my pictures are too bright or overexposed, however the lightness of the above picture makes it look almost like a painting. I thought it looked cool.

On the return trip, we took the scenic route through the canyon along the Colorado River to an obscure, creepy-as-hell ghost town named Cisco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco,_Utah). This is a town straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre...half destroyed buildings with childrens' clothing strewn about on the ground, surrounded by wrecked cars with human-sized holes in the front windshields and the airbags blown. A woman was sitting alone with a dog on the porch of what looked like a general store. After she walked off, we peered through the windows. I only saw covered furniture and a counter with beef jerky, but it creeped me out so much that I literally ran back to the car.

Remember the La Sal Mountains? La Sal means "the salt" in Spanish. Don't forget.