3.5.14 : rafting westwater canyon.

Last week, I was lucky enough to get to accompany my boyfriend and three of his buddies on a two-day rafting trip on the Colorado River through Westwater Canyon in Moab, Utah. Being very early in the season, we couldn't have asked for better conditions. The sun was shining brightly during the 60º day we ran the rapids and despite there still being snow on the banks of the river, the water wasn't nearly as cold as we'd feared it would be.

We all work together on the mountain, so we hit the road as soon as we could on Tuesday evening  after we were off to go set up camp at the put-in site and prepare to hit the water on Wednesday morning. We had the place to ourselves and enjoyed a nice fire before hitting the sack with intentions of getting an early start.

The next morning, two of us set shuttle (took one vehicle to the take-out location so we'd have transportation when we finished) while the others got the boats inflated and began loading and packing things up.

Christian and I R2'd a 10.5 foot raft while our friend Wolk went in a kayak and our other two buddies, Bjorn and Dan decided to see how effective two grown men would be in a one-man inflatable ducky.

It was an absolute blast spending two days on the water and camping in the canyon. Being my first rafting experience, I got very lucky and Christian and I managed to keep our boat upright and avoid swimming. The other guys were not as lucky, but it would've been no small task to avoid it given the circumstances.

It'd be hard to really sum up the trip in writing without making this the longest post ever, so I'll leave it up to the massive amount of photos below to give you a better idea of the experience. It was absolutely beautiful in the canyon and I can't wait to go back and experience it again.

10.18.13 : ruby beach.

The last day of my trip was a bittersweet one to say the least. It's impossible for me to adequately put into words the emotional changes I went through over the course of the time it took me to make my way from San Diego up to Vancouver. In between the legs of my journey, I left San Diego for good, saying goodbye to the almost four years of friendships and memories I'd made there. I can't think of a better way to have ended it than with the trip I unexpectedly embarked on up the coast.

Every day behind the wheel helped to grow my confidence in myself and being alone on such an ambitiously unplanned journey. For every moment of loneliness I felt, I had at least twenty more moments of intense happiness and gratefulness at my surroundings and the ability to be witness to the ever-changing scenery around me.

I've got one more special blog post coming from my last moments on the beach. For now, here are the last photos from my journey up the coast.

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10.17.13 : back down the washington coast.

I had to give myself the goal of completing my "up the coast" blog posts before the year's end because of my recent slacking tendencies. In my defense, my life is just about as busy and exhausting as I've ever known it to be right now, so the last thing I want to do when I come home from a long day of work is sit in front of my computer screen and edit photos. Alas, it's my day off and I've found myself with copious amounts of laundry needing to be done, so I'm forcing myself to edit while I finish that task.

We're picking up in Washington on day nine of my second half of the coastal trip. It was my second to last day and a very full one at that. I left the cozy town of North Bend to head west and back to the coast. Taking a ferry across seemed like my best option, and I caught one just north of Seattle. Again, I kept up with my tradition of stopping for anything that looked even a little bit interesting, which put me very behind schedule and found me getting into my camp destination just before the sun disappeared.

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