City of Rocks

Well, we didn't make it to Moab this year but we did go up to the City of Rocks in southern Idaho. It's on the border between Idaho and Utah basically and it's a quick 2 1/2 hour drive up there. We met up with a few old friends and a few new friends. We stayed in the best campsite in the park. The "city", as it is commonly referred, is basically a rock version of New York (of course on a much smaller scale). It's just a big field full of rocks that resemble a city. Really cool place, a rock climbers paradise. It is outside the city of Almo, a tiny little place with one tiny grocery store, two (yes, two) restaurants and a visitor's center. In recent years, they have built up a hot spring to be a great place to hang out in it's pool like atmosphere (and incredibly hot springs, 111 is what one of the pools is).

We drove up on Saturday morning because Mike needed to ride his bike to prepare for LOTOJA (explanation of this in a previous post). We also got called out for search and rescue at about 9 on Friday night, resulting in a quick and successful evacuation of an ill hiker by a Lifeflight helicopter. We got there around noon and hung out, took a nap, then did a quick climb before meeting up with everyone at the pizza joint. We had a great time at the hot spring then back to the campsite for some yummy S'mores and fellowship with friends. Sunday morning yielded a nice sunny outlook and a little bit of sleeping in. After breakfast, the crew of 8 headed up to Swiss Cheese and String Cheese, two climbs next to each other with a great place to hang out. Mike lead up both of the climbs to set top ropes for everyone else to have fun on. Right as the last people are finishing up the climbs, the weather dropped about 20 degrees very very quickly and within about 10 minutes we were feeling rain drops. We quickly packed up and headed off to the campsite so that we were not in danger of lightening while on the rock. We ate a quick lunch then headed to town to hang out inside during the rain storm. We killed some time eating pie, visiting the visitor's center, exploring a few touristy places around the city then headed back to camp. Since it was still quite cold and the weather forecast looking even more grim for Monday, Mike and I decided to head home after a few hours hanging out around the campfire. We made our quick trip home Sunday night to arrive to our house which the power had gone out on. No worries, cause we just crashed.

Part of the group watching the climbers, from left to right, Brent, Amanda, Michelle and Emmy.

London, the crazy climber dog. He loved the city, he could just wander and climb rocks. Apparently, he is really into rock climbing, he loved it!

Fogg is belaying James, the climber. Thought this was a cool shot.

This is Scotty, a new friend.

We spent today just bumming around, sleeping in, watching TV and generally just relaxing on Labor Day. Mike did some work around the yard after the rain stopped.

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend as well, wish it could be just a few days longer...