Adventures in Moab, Utah

This past weekend was spent camping and jeeping in the great Moab, Utah with a handful of my college age friends. Unfortunately, I do not own a Jeep so I rode in my friend, Tyler's, and the boy I met two Fridays ago, Mike. I made a few new acquaintances, but it's very hard to get to know people very well when you're riding in separate Jeeps all day. But I did get the chance, however, to get to know Mike better because, of course, we were in the same Jeep. Though, I am going to take this opportunity to diverge from the purpose of this blog and tell you the story of an experience I had with Mike instead of talking about my thoughts and feelings about getting to know him. This is because the story is awesome and the later is boring and I'm not particularly in the mood for writing about boring stuff.

Most of what we were doing all day Saturday was called rock crawling. This consists of driving Jeeps up ridiculously large rocks and hoping you don't roll while doing so. If you have a Jeep, however, that is made for rock crawling, like Tyler's, you don't do as much worrying as you do climbing. It had been a long day of crawling and we were heading back to our campsite before our daylight died. I was sleepy and a little chilled because Tyler had taken the front doors off of his Jeep and the warmth of the day had vanished, causing cold air to fill Vanessa (Vanessa is what I named his Jeep). I was seated in the back so at least doors were protecting me from the frigid air, unlike Mike and Tyler in front, but I was still cold and tired. Anyway, coldness really doesn't have anything to do with my story... So we're coming up to this rock about to start climbing and, overcome with tiredness I opened my mouth to let out a big yawn. Mike glances back at me and exclaims,
"Did you seriously just yawn?"
"Yeah. I'm really tired." I say with a smile.
"Do you not see what's in front of us?!" He was obviously very concerned about this.
"Yeah, I'm just not that worried about it. Seriously, what's the worst that could happen?" Sometimes I'm a little too laid back.
"Uh, we die?"
"Psh, then I die." I spoke a little too soon...
We were climbing and all of a sudden Vanessa starts to slide down the rock and before we knew it, she rolled completely over and back on her side. We were about to go over again and off a steep decline but last minute she slammed back down on her passenger side. I began to look around to make sure Mike and Tyler were okay. Tyler glanced back at me to do the same. Everyone was fine. Our friends outside were in a panic and leaped out of their Jeeps to come help us. Mike, being a firefighter yelled to our friends on the outside "Is it stable?! Is it Stable?!" I start to unbuckle to begin to climb out when I smelled smoke and I heard a voice exclaim "It's on fire! Get the @#%! out of the Jeep!" All in a panic Mike unbuckles his seat belt and notices that Tyler's is stuck. He begins to help him but Tyler yelled "Get Elisabeth!" because he's sweet and was worried about me and obviously didn't think I would be able to get out by myself. Mike flew out over Tyler to get to me. By that time I already unbuckled my seat belt and opened the door over my head. As I'm climbing out I see Mike standing below with his arms held out yelling "Elisabeth, jump!". Yeah, there was no way I was going to leap into his arms, so I flung myself out of the Jeep and ate it when I landed. Mike did get the chance, however, to help me up. Tyler had already managed to undo his seatbelt and was searching for a fire extinguisher.One of our friends ran up to put out the flame, but his fire extinguisher had expired and didn't work. By that time, Tyler found another one and extinguished the flame.

We were all okay and no one got seriously injured except for poor Vanessa. She was seriously the coolest Jeep ever. The next five or six hours were spent in the dark putting Vanessa back on her tires and getting her back to town so she could be fixed. The whole trail was on sandstone, so it was very difficult to find the trail in the dark, so the passengers guided the Jeeps on foot by flashlight. It was midnight by the time we got back into town. We were all exhausted and famished, so instead of heading back to the campsite and attempt to make food for ourselves, we went to Denny's and kicked back with some burgers.

The trip was unbelievably awesome. I wouldn't give it up for the world. One always grows so much closer to the people they're with when they go through something traumatic or stressful. Life is indeed an adventure.