In the morning we finished off the frozen yogurt for breakfast and hit the road. Our first stop was at mojave national forest. Soon after entering, we pulled off the road to walk towards a rocky wall in the distance. We climbed up and down the cliffs taking pictures and fooling around, and were about 20 minutes from the road. We were well into the middle of nowhere, and both of us decided we could really use a bathroom. Even if we'd walked back to our car it would probably have been an hour before we found one, and we were so far from anyone, we decided we would go in the woods ("woods" being the scraggly half trees and cactuses that grow in the desert). I really, really, really do not like going in the woods. Long after Tricia had finished, I was still trying to talk myself into it. I finally psyched myself up enough, and got behind a rock, and squatted down.....and immediately proceeded to lose my balance and fall directly into a prickly little shrub and completely scratch up my hip and thigh. Good times. :) We did see a little tiny mouse skitter across the rocks out there though, so that was worth it.
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| Tricia made it! |
After getting back to the car, we continued on to the sand dunes. We wanted to climb all the way to the top, so we walked and walked and walked with our shoes off squishing our toes in the sand. As far as we walked, the dunes never got any closer, and the people at the top stayed as small as ants. As we were walking, we watched the people at the top run down, and when they reached the bottom they were still as small as ants. So we realized that we would never even make it to the base of the dunes, and since we'd left the car with nothing more than the camera, we regrettably turned back.
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| Tricia's rock |
Finally, as we were just about to drive out of the park, Tricia spotted a rock that she had to climb. I followed behind her, taking pictures of her and the rock and the mountains beyond. As she was trying to figure out how to climb down, I moved beneath her to make certain I could capture any less than gracefull moments for posterity. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my foot. Looking down, a two inch spike was sticking out of the bottom of my foot, having gone through the side of my shoe. (yes, I was wearing sandals. But the thing went through the rubber sole. It was vicious.) Okay, you remember those little burrs that got stuck in your socks when you tramped through the woods? Like that, only with two inch spikes. The other similarity - it was hooked at the end to hang on. I gave it a yank and was a bit creeped out by the fact that it didn't come out. I said, "it's hooked in there..." At this point I honestly contemplated taking a picture, but then looked up into Tricia's horrified face. Apparently, "it's hooked in there" sounds scary. She said "Can you hop back to the car???" I said, "It's okay, it's okay. I'm fine. You're going to have to pull it out though." So Tricia valiantly ripped the spike out of my foot. And I forgot to take a picture. :(
On the way back, I got a little to close to some kind of cactus palm tree hybrid with wooden spikes at the end of the palm fronds. It stabbed right through my jeans and into my thigh. Plants are mean in the desert. But I was pretty proud of all my battle wounds.
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Kat taking pics out
the back window |
We spent the rest of the day driving to tuba city to meet our latest couch hosts. They were so nice, even though we didn't make it there until 10. They had towels and bottled water and apples set out for us to make us feel welcome. We sat up and talked with them about our travels (they'd met in the peace corps in Africa) and living in the Navajo Indian reservation that is tuba city and about teaching sixth graders at the reservation. We slept in a spare room on blow up mattresses and set the alarm for 5 am. We were going to see the sun rise at the grand canyon in the morning!!
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