Every December, Jason and I host a small but boisterous
holiday gathering. We invite the same crowd we have for more than a decade and engage
in loud and lively activities like Just Dance and a white elephant exchange.
That tradition continued in 2019 with another tumultuous event.
Our bash typically starts with a rowdy dinner, and it just gets more thunderous from there.Remember when your mom made you and your siblings line up for photos like cell phone strength bars? Well…The next worldwide boy band sensation?
This year, our attendees totaled sixteen, a.k.a. everyone we
invited. We ate Southwestern fare with a bit of stagey flair. This included chipotle
glazed chicken salad and Southwest potato & green chili soup from Café
Zupas, along with churros and burritos from Sweeto Burrito. We danced, gamed,
ate more beans than wisdom dictated, and posed for an assortment of ridiculous
pictures. Admit it, you’ve always wanted to live out your fantasy of being one
of Santa’s third-string reindeer in front of a camera. Who doesn’t love
Smasher, Vomit, and Stupid?
Pajamas, ugly sweaters and even Chewbacca onesies all regularly appear at our gathering. This year, Jason and I went a little less ugly.The white elephants at our party have become much more imaginative over the years. Who knew pachyderms could be so inventive?
It was a night of stuffing, laughing, and prancing. After all,
no song has ever been written about having a dignified Christmas. Bring on the
jolly!
This fall we spent a long weekend in Moab, like we have practically
done since therapods pushed their toes into its scarlet mud. On this occasion,
my sister joined us, and the weather was ideal, which made the trip exactly
perfect.
Longbow Arch spans 60 feet.
Although November is one of our preferred months to visit
Moab, conditions can be unpredictable that time of year. Fortunately,
temperatures stayed in the sixties and skies remained sunny. Thank you, Gods of
Not-Quite Winter!
Longbow was impressive, and we only came across a handful of hikers on its trail.
How did we make use of all that delicious sunshine? First,
we hiked the 2.5 miles to Longbow Arch, a trail we had somehow never explored
or even heard of. Quite a few sights are packed into this short jaunt including
petroglyphs, dinosaur tracks, and the obvious arch.
When a sandstone slab crashed down from a cliff, dinosaur tracks created 150 million years ago were revealed.
The next day, we trekked two trails, Cowboy Jacuzzis and
Jeep Arch. Reaching the Cowboy Jacuzzis requires under a mile each way. Mill Creek
slows as it fills these rock bowls, and sunshine striking the stone heats the
water to bath temperatures… well, that’s what supposedly happens during warmer
times of the year. It was cooler than any bath I’d like to dip into when we
were there.
The Cowboy Jacuzzis can be accessed via a trail that starts in a residential area.
We visited Jeep Arch just a year ago, but since my sister
had never been, we were disposed to enjoy this hike again. It was just as spectacular
as the first time.
Although we had trekked to Jeep Arch recently, we were happy to tread that colorful path again.Does this remind you of a retro Boy Scouts magazine cover? If not, we failed.
Our last day, we hiked somewhere between six and seven miles on the Amasa Back Trail with an added spur to an overlook above the Colorado River and Poison Spider Mesa. Amasa Back is a peninsula formed by a U-bend in the Colorado River. Its trail climbs to its crown. Rising 1000 feet has its advantages. At first, we were disappointed that our perspective on countless fins and dramatic cliffs from above the Colorado was marred by State Route 279 and other mementos of humanity. However, in the end, we found the ORVs and other Vs making their way up Poison Spider Mesa to be extremely entertaining, especially the unjustifiably confident ones. Our prospect also revealed the numerous layers of plateaus expanding above State Route 279 invisible from its pavement. An unfamiliar look on such a well-known motorway was fascinating.
This monolith is one of the more interesting features along the hike to Jeep Arch.
What did we like about hiking Amasa Back? The vista from the
viewpoint was unique and, surprisingly, made more interesting by its manmade
touches. Also, we were able to appreciate this perspective in solitude. While the
path had plenty of bikers on it until we passed the HyMasa Trail, a single-track
used to access the Captain Ahab Trail, we didn’t see a single person the rest
of our journey. What didn’t we like? Amasa Back is a jeep trail, which means a
wider and more scuffed route.
Although Amasa Back is a jeep road, we didn’t see a single vehicle.We watched numerous vehicles attempt to surmount Poison Spider Mesa from our perch above the Colorado, many of them futilely.
It was great to share Moab with my sister and her hubby. Usually,
it’s just me and Jason hogging the splendor to ourselves. Sunshine and sisters pair
perfectly in the desert like cyanobacteria and lichens.
“No
pleasure endures unseasoned by variety,” Publilius
Syrus once said. Jason and I concur. During the last few months, we have
participated in a range of eclectic activities from dancing at balls to acting
like bulls. Here are just a few of those pastimes, from the elegant to asinine.
I have enough swashbuckling adornments to be a proper pirate 10 times over.
For starters, we danced in tricornes and corsets at the Cannon Ball & Proper Pirate Soiree. Then, we organized a “crepes and escapes” party utilizing a mobile escape trailer, inviting around twenty of our friends. Three teams representing different circles of our comrades participated in this rivalry. Expecting the nice fall temperatures to remain, we rented a park pavilion for everyone to consume crepes and chill in. They chilled. The temperatures stayed nice, but the wind did not. Bitter gusts sent most attendees running for cover in their cars while not in the escape trailer. Jason and I joined the smallest team, My Relatives. Although we finished with seven minutes to spare at 37 minutes and 46 seconds, we also finished last. A team of Jason’s coworkers completed its escape in just under 30 minutes, and the winners of the challenge were our dancing friends who finished in 23 minutes. Well done crafty steppers!
Mobile Escapes easily fit our three teams into a 2-hour block.
With
a handful of chums, we participated in a silly scavenger hunt during which we
not only discovered unnoticed bits of our surroundings but also became noticed
bits of our surroundings through outlandish acts. We received 11th
place out of almost 100 competing teams by completed nearly 100 submissions,
many of them ridiculous, in just over two hours.
We
took a large portion of our nieces and nephews to Evermore with us again as a
Halloween gift. Some of them became Blackheart Hunters; others became friends
with the skeletons. I became jumpy. As Evermore is ever exciting, we went back two
more times with friends during the Lore season and then again during Aurora. We
got to be the first riders on the Evermore Express, Evermore’s new train.
Although
our time in October is always limited, we took a couple hours to visit Cornbelly’s
one evening where we got moderately lost in a wizarding maze. Don’t worry,
there was no sketchy portkey involved.
I don’t have a need for speed, but I do get it done for fun.
Our friends, Cam and Fran, treated us to some racing at The Grid, one of the longest and most technical multi-level racing tracks in this section of the country. With 60,000 square feet and electric vehicles capable of going up to 60 MPH, it’s swanky. Our group raced three times. I finished faster the second time and then slower than frozen tar on the slopes of Everest the third time. Why so slow? The reckless revealed themselves the second round, and I wanted to steer clear of them. I prefer to surround myself with only the idiots I can control, i.e. myself. Thanks Cam and Fran!
The Regency Retreat was in the castle at Wadley Farms. It wasn’t quite Pemberley but close enough.
As
we all know, fall isn’t fall without at least a few balls. Yes, I did just make
that up, but I’m sure it’s going to catch on. While we didn’t get a chance to
be drawn by a horse-drawn carriage or play whist at the Regency Retreat, we did
dine and dance there. This was the inaugural occurrence of this event, and we
look forward to attending it again next year. Finally, we went to the Dickens’
Ball where big skirts twirled, and we were all as merry as schoolboys.
We can’t go to any Regency event without running into at least a dozen friends.
While that’s not an exhaustive list of our unconnected goings-on over the last quarter, it’s long enough. We were on the grid, in the corn, and on the dance floor, but we were never bored.
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