SATURDAY
I left early on Saturday morning to drive to Salt Lake City to drop my laptop off at the Apple store. It’s about 4 hours to get there, and my appointment was at 11:00AM. I ended up getting my screen, keyboard & battery all replaced! They shipped it out & I was on my way without a computer…. honestly felt weird. Probably my first time without a functioning computer in my life since I was like, 10.
Last year when I was in SLC for a few weeks, we went to Antelope Island State Park outside of town. While we were there we saw a bunch of bison & wildlife, so I decided to spend my afternoon there with my new 200-600mm lens. It was SO MUCH FUN. This was the first time I had experienced wildlife photography with animals all over the place. Tons of bison, I saw a porcupine in a tree (what?!), antelope, and a coyote.
This coyote was out on a salt flat on the border of the lake. It was such an awesome experience to sit and watch him stalk birds & play out in this vast, flat lake bed.
On the drive back to Moab the sunset was stupidly pretty…. had to pull over and get these images. Loved it.
SUNDAY
I was by myself on Sunday, so I decided to hike up to Castleton Tower & make a little 60-90 second video about my day. It was super fun!! (the video is below)
It was crazy windy that day, and a bunch of groups who were going to climb it had to bail. Among those groups was someone named David, a friend of a friend who lives in CO. Earlier this year he hooked me up with a pro-deal on a Black Diamond #6 cam. I wasn’t sure when I could pick that up, but he happened to have it!! So cool, so random.
While making dinner that night a random snake popped out from under the Jeep… really freaky thing to see while you’re boiling some rice & cutting up sweet potatoes for dinner…
MONDAY
Monday came around and my loaner laptop (that was mailed to me by my boss) was delayed until Wednesday night… I needed a laptop, so I drove to Grand Junction, about an hour and a half away, to buy a new laptop to use for the week. I picked up a macbook air & had it set up within half an hour. I couldn’t miss like, 3 days of work!
On this day I also had a call with my bosses. Our company is going to go contract based only, so I will be losing my salary & benefits at the end of May. I’m approaching this with an optimistic attitude and will be putting lot of energy into my photography & videography.
Kayla was also in Grand Junction, so we met back up & went on a hike where she had seen some mountain goats the day prior. We did the hike & found a group of mountain goats. It was super fun to hang out with them & snap some photos :)
TUESDAY
Tuesday after work I edited all of the photos that had built up over the weekened while I didn’t have a computer. I had 1,500 photos or so to sort through… I normally shoot 100-200 a day, but there had been some awesome experiences over the weekend that I took a lot of photos of!!
WEDNESDAY
After work on Wednesday I went back to camp to have a chill camp night, edit photos, watch a movie, and relax. As I was editing photos, a green Tacoma with a camper in the bed pulled in. I waved them in, no biggie sharing a campsite with someone, Willow Springs fills up quick! It ended up being my friend Rob, who I had met in Bend last year!! So crazy.. what a random thing to have happen. We drank some whiskey, talked about fun work stuff, and sat around the fire, it was awesome.
THURSDAY
Thursday evening my friend Italia from Chicago pulled in with her friend Mishel. We went climbing at Wall St. and did a few easy warm up routes to get Italia & Mishel back in the swing of it.
I put up a top rope for everyone & then went direct to the anchor so I could hang out & snap photos from above. Always love seeing people climb from that perspective, really fun!
After we climbed I made that rice + veggies dinner for everyone & we passed out exhausted.
FRIDAY
Friday night we went to the beach & sat by the water for a while, and then went back to climb at Wall St. I climbed my favorite route there, Lactomangulation (5.10b) to set up another top rope.
When we got back to camp Mishel took over both kitchens & put us to work. My friend Val (who I met here last year) came by for dinner and wine. We chopped veggies while Mishel seasoned everything & got all of the food going. The dinner was ABSURDLY good…. like, best camp dinner probably ever 😂
After dinner Val busted out the Tarot Cards & sage and did tarot reading for everyone. It was really cool, she had a few different decks with different themes. After that I did a few magic tricks, and then we all realized it was like, 2am… wow.
Great way to end my stay in Moab!! ❤️