Happy Anniversary to Us! part I

This Sunday was our first anniversary(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). To celebrate, J took Friday and today off of work so we could have a nice four-day weekend. We decided to spend our weekend in Moab because I'd never really been, except one time when we drove through and I said I thought it would be fun to come back sometime.

So we went back--with 4,000 other people. Our anniversary just happened to fall on the same weekend as the Moab Half Marathon. I wished my knee were fixed and I could run too.

The drive down to Moab was pleasant.

We had decided to spend our first evening camping. J and I both think we like camping*. Friday night we went to Slickrock something camping, which is a camping place where you sign up for a campsite and everyone has their own little spot with a place to put your tent, and a picnic table and a fire ring and a barbecue thingie. J was surprised. He'd never been to a commercial campsite. He thought I had booked one that would be in nature, because that's the only kind of camping he's done. I have fond memories of Campland on the Bay, though, and I thought it would be nice to have clean bathrooms and showers and a jacuzzi.

We got the most private site, which we knew wouldn't be that private, because, come on, it's camping. And it turned out to be in the corner closest to the roads, so we got to listen to traffic all night long. Hm. BUT, I barbecued our steak dinner and things were great!

(I forgot paper plates and the little store was closed, but it was totally no problem because I made makeshift dinner plates by folding heavy-duty foil in half and putting a few layers of paper towels in the middle and then closing them. Why did we even think we needed paper plates to eat steak??)

Then, when we were trying to sleep our air mattress kept deflating and we were basically sleeping on the ground. And it was so cold that one time we both happened to wake up in the middle of the night. Since it was during the quiet time and we couldn't re-inflate our mattress with the noisy compressor, my poor sweet husband re-inflated our mattress with his lungs. And we went back to sleep.

When we woke up for real-morning, our mattress was deflated again. And it was SO windy. We couldn't get our fires to stay lit because the wind kept blowing them out. Eventually we were able to cook our really cute, very well planned breakfast...but as we waited for it to cook**, we kept chasing our stuff that kept blowing. The paper towels were the worst, because they started blowing down our little road thing and the unrolled as they went. AUGh! And then as we kept trying to pack up our tent it was so windy that everything kept blowing away***. It was a disaster. That was when I remembered I don't love camping all that much.

We were happy that we had only paid for one night of camping. We packed up without even packing our tent back into its little bag. It would have been impossible, really. And then we started looking for a hotel, because we were both super tired.

Everywhere was expensive. (Partly I think it was because it was one of their busy weekends, and partly I think it was because it's Moab.) We called a whole bunch of places, and it seemed like we were going to have to pay $130/night even for a run-down place. Unless we went to Green River (like 45 minutes away), and then we could pay $90 for something.

As we started driving we decided to check the Riverside Inn. Angels from Heaven must have intervened, because they had a vacancy (!) and the room was only going to cost like $80 with tax (!) and they were willing to clean it quickly (!), which was absolutely essential because we were totally exhausted and we were not going to wait until 3pm to sleep (even if it meant paying $130 for a run-down place).

We sat in the car, in the parking lot and we read together for another half hour after J paid for our room. Then we went in, claimed our room, and immediately collapsed in a heap on the bed for a nap which lasted all afternoon. Complete bliss.


*We thought.
** (Burn.)
*** Oh my gosh. Our tent windows pop out a little, and to keep them popped out you're supposed to stake them down. I actually attached mine to the little sign that said which site we were at. Okay, get this, our ENTIRE TENT (and all of the contents) were kept from totally blowing away just because of the way I fastened our window cord. But of course the tent still flew in all directions...just it was tethered to the wooden sign so it didn't actually fly away. I was so sure the tent was going to break itself.