Vegas baby, yeah!!

Last week I headed up to vegas to meet with some friends and climb in red rock. While I was there we also wandered the casinos, saw the blue man group, checked out Madame Tussaud‘s special halloween exhibit, and generally had a great time. Present for the fun were Machelle, Stephanie, Christin, Tim and Paul. After everyone else had headed home Paul and I jumped in the xterra and headed to Zion, where we found some free camping at Mosquito Cove. The next day we headed to the backcountry desk to get permits for Keyhole, and went to rent a drysuit for Paul. I won’t go into details on the canyon since I’m saving that for the next post, but we had a great time. When we emerged, dripping, from the bowels of the canyon we dried off and headed further into the east side of Zion. Paul had never been to this side of the park which features the unworldly landscapes of navaho sandstone slickrock. I took him to see checkerboard mesa, then we stopped off at a few viewpoints on the drive back west to take pictures. Near where we had canyoneered all day we found a large herd of Big Horn Sheep performing for the tourists. We stopped to take pictures of them until the light started to fade and then drove on back through Springdale to our camping spot, well satisfied with the day.