Tealeaf's Journal

Return from Canyonlands
I am back from my most recent project. This one was amazing. Just before leaving for the trip I went up to Colorado for a friendly visit with some old friends. That drive on I70 in Eastern Utah and Western Colorado concludes my route of I70. That is to say, I have now driving on every inch of Interstate 70.

On to the trip into Canyonlands National Park. It started off poorly, as I had been trying to dry some fruit leathers at home before the trip and ate the meat off the peal of a mango while doing so. I forgot I had done this for awhile. This is important, because I had a rash on my face at the start of my trip, very similar to poison ivy rashes, which I am becoming very allergic to. I didn't know what the rash was until one of my coworkers mentioned that she used to work on a mango plantation and the sap from mangos carries some of the same chemicals of poison ivy (the two plants are related, I guess). So, I got a mango rash for the start of the trip.

We stayed our first night in Moab, Utah. Then into the national park. Canyonlands is quite amazing. As it turns out, we had several houses to sleep in, but not enough for all, and as I was assuming that we would be camping out, I offered to camp. One other guy also did. We ended up in a group camp ground that was amazing. The campfire ring was in a cave with a split in the roof, running three-quarters of the way back into the cave, so smoke could escape.

The work was 8 miles (or one hour of driving) into the backcountry of the park. On the way in, there were at least three obvious Native American or Prehistoric ruins in the cliffs. We would work for some 8 hours, and then drive back out.

On the third day, my camp mate decided to move into one of the houses, thus, I was the only one camping. Also, around this time my rash cleared up. I was a happy camper!

The second to last morning, I awoke to 6 inches of snow around the tent. I got ready for the day, and as I was starting breakfast, my boss came down from the housing to say that we were taking off before the weather (ongoing snow) got worse, since we had a few passes to go over on the way home. So I packed up and hit the road.

All that snow reminded me that I may want to start getting into some winter sports. Lots of people around here downhill ski, but I am not really attracted to that. And since I don't have my cross country equipment, I'm very tempted to follow up a notion to start snow shoeing. There are lots of oppurtunities to do so within easy distance.

Enough for now, I am off to Thanksgiving preparations.

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