Oh @#%&!

We don't mean to offend, but we think you would agree with our assessment of the situation. We decided on a hike up to Angel's landing for today. The park service offers plenty of warning about the exposure and the heights that you will be facing. We listened, and thought, what the heck, you only live once. Which might have been completely true if we had let go of the anchored chain, or misstepped about 8 inches to the left on a particular section. The hike is really beautiful. The last 0.5 miles will scare the @#%& out of you if you are even remotely afraid of heights. For most of it, its got views of two canyons on either side, about 1650 feet (straight down) and 800 feet (95% - 100% slope, so you're still dead). Literally for a half mile you are so exposed, you want to cry, or puke, or pee your pants, or maybe that was just Heather and me. We chose to just to repeat the mantra "Don't look down, just look ahead at the rocks." Mike really doesn't like heights, and he no longer believes in the "face your fears, that's how you can overcome them". He is now a subscriber to the "what the @#%$ was I thinking" school. Once on the top, you want to rest and eat lunch, and as you sit there admiring the view there is a creeping feeling... YOU HAVE TO GO BACK DOWN!!!! Which now means that you are leaning FORWARD over the same precipices and cliffs that before you could just look straight ahead at the rock. You have no choice but to look down, and 1 foot to the right of a section is 1650 feet of air. AIR IS NOT SOLID... YOU WILL DIE... so you just take the best step possible, and hold on to that chain with great intensity. You may be tempted to think that we are being overly dramatic, and maybe we are, but in the meantime, trust us, it was SCARY. Once we were back past the chain sections, we were elated, and in actuality, the 14er wasn't even half as harrowing as this hike. We ended the hike by swimming in the river at the bottom to celebrate and cool off.

Tomorrow we are off to Vegas... a whole new kind of scary.