What a vacation

I've been sort of internet-less for a few days, so I couldn't do as much blogging as I would have liked. Once an adventure is followed by another, it's really hard for me to write about the first.
But I'll give it a try.
Markus and I are currently on the second half of our vacation, spending time with Craig and Mary in Edmonton. As expected, it is a totally different vacation from our time in Vegas, but is also proving to be a good time. We've been resting a lot... I'm afraid I'm giving Craig and Mary the impression that I'm a big fat lazy person. I seriously haven't slept this much since Christmas break. We've been hanging out with C and M's friend Zach, who up until very recently worked at BioWare with them. What this basically means is that everyone around me is speaking nerd (this is their term, not mine) and I have no idea what's going on about 72% of the time. Seriously. It's a little bit hilarious. The only gaming system I've ever owed was the regular old Nintendo that gramma bought Chandra and I for Christmas when I was like... I have no idea... maybe 5? Today C and M are having friends over for dinner and afterwards we're having a giant Guitar Hero tournament. Markus just finished creating a bracket system on Excel. Tehehe. I love my nerdy boyfriend.

As far as the first half of our vacation goes, it was pretty awesome. We were so lucky to be staying with Dawn and Joey, because they really showed us things that we otherwise wouldn't have experienced. I've never really thought that those vacation guidebooks were necessary when going on vacation to a place where there is obviously tons of stuff to do, but I can definitely see now why people use them. If we didn't have Joey and Dawn, we would have just wandered around and spent a lot of money. I mean, spent a lot more money. Because a lot of money was definitely spent anyway. Yikes.
Joey works at Wynn and got us tickets to the two shows that are playing there right now. Sunday night we saw Le Reve, which was basically the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It's totally inexplicable. Markus and I were trying to tell Craig and Mary about it and we were just babbling and throwing our hands around and giggling. Even someone who isn't impressed by art would be impressed by the feats of strength or the amazing set. I really can't convey how impressed I was. If you really care, ask me in person, and I'll try to babble a bit more to you.
Monday was Markus' and my anniversary, so we went to dinner at Tao and then to see Spamalot. Markus does a good job at describing these in his blog, so if you care, check it out.
Tuesday and Wednesday, Joey took Markus and I to Zion National Park. We went for 8-hour "hikes" on both days. The first day we hiked Subway, a trail that took us down a mountainside and into a canyon where the water had carved out a subway-looking tunnel through the rock. It was really neat to be so far down inside the rock, surrounded on all sides by giant walls of sandstone. That hike required a couple small rappels and a few swims through icy water.
The next day we hiked Mystery Canyon. For the first two or three hours of the hike, my mind kept replaying these words, "This is the worst day of my life. Why do people do this for fun? I hate Joey. This is the worst day of my life...." To get down into the canyon we had to climb down a steep forest-like cliff. Joey read the guidebook aloud before we began down the trail to make sure we were at the right place, "notice a fairly prominent trail that traverses to the right, going across a steep scree slope heading toward some thicker vegetation on the right and downhill. Be very slow and careful on this section of the trail. This is called Death Gully for a reason." Seriously people, from where we were standing, you could see about 2 feet of the trail, then it dropped off and disappeared. At this point I started crying. Not sobbing, just like, tears coming from my eyes because I wasn't going to see my mom again.
This hike had 12 rappels, two of which were about 150 feet. The first big rappel lowered us into what they call The Jungle, and it really was like paradise. After hiking hours and hours through rock and sand and sun, all of the sudden we were in a pool of clear blue-green water, surrounded by ferns growing on the walls of rock. It was at this point, about 5 hours into the hike that I really began to be okay. Before that, I truly couldn't figure out why anyone would do this, but then we were in such a beautiful place that other people will never see. Suddenly, I had my reason. The last rappel took us down into The Narrows, which anyone can access. As we rappelled 150 feet down a waterfall into the Virgin River people took pictures of us, and when we landed, they cheered! Hah. At that point, Markus and I high-fived and decided that we, most definitely, are some serious bad-asses.

Joey took lots of pictures of the hikes, I'll post them as soon as he send them to Markus. In the meantime, just use your imagination.


Oh. Important add-on: I don't actually hate Joey. I just thought I did during those first few hours of hoping that I was going to live to see the next day.