My All Flesh Must Be Eaten group keeps an eye out for zombie-themed fun around town, which the ZM then translates into experience for our character in-game - like LARPing but a lot less nerdy. We even use our character names instead of our real names!
So it was that Joanne, Trevor, Diaper Steve, and ZM Glenn all arrived at a battered-looking building on Colfax for our latest IRL adventure. Room Escape Adventures locks you in a room with 11 other people and gives you an hour to solve the riddles and discover the hidden clues that will reveal the combination that unlocks the way out. The catch is that there's a zombie chained to one wall, and every five minutes, its chain gets let out one foot.
We were briefed on the situation by a "scientist" complete with lab coat, clipboard, and unplaceable Eastern European accent - Dr. Oxy was developing a super-secret serum for military purposes but accidentally pricked himself with the needle! While he was still lucid, he locked himself in his lab, left a number of clues around should he regain his humanity to release himself, and chained himself to the wall. I don't really remember why we were supposed to be going in the room with him, but whatever, in we went.
I don't really want to say more than that, in case someone ever stumbles on this blog. Just go. It's a blast, and they have them all over the country. Our local Denver Room had a 32% success rate, and Vigilance Force (we were allowed to name our team) managed to join that exclusive club with six minutes to spare.
Hiked today for the first time in a long time, a 9-mile loop around Golden Gate Canyon State Park, including the 9000-foot Windy Peak summit.
It will be three years this year since "the incident" and I still don't have my confidence back, but today felt good. And I'm excited to plan some trips this summer.
There's an episode of The Office (one of my favorite shows ever) after Michael has his heart broken by Holly, and he meets this woman while giving blood. They hit it off, but he passes out ("I was so nervous about this I don't think I've eaten in three days.") before he can get her number. She leaves her glove, though, and Michael picks it up, and all day he's hoping she'll show up again for her glove, but she never does. And at the end of the episode, in a rare moment of insight, he says, "Sometimes it's not about Cinderella getting her slipper back, but it's the fact that the prince picked up the slipper at all."
Because it's not about me getting back to snow-climbing and bushwhacking and multi-night backpacking trips. It's about the fact that I'm excited to do a single-night trip on a trail I've been on countless times before. It means I'm getting better. I'm trying to celebrate those victories, however small, rather than expecting myself to overcome a traumatic experience in an instant.
Because I keep planning these elaborate multi-night trips, and obviously I had to go somewhere I'd never been before, and it *had* to be 30 miles at least, and then I'd chicken out and find some excuse to not go. If healing means I'm gonna do eight-mile roundtrip overnights, if I'm gonna walk on trails you could take a car on, if I'm gonna go to Lost Creek Wilderness for the umpteenth time, I'm doing it.
Day 1
We had just landed in Phoenix and gotten on the shuttle to the car rental when Dean asked, "Are we in California?" I can see why - Phoenix is glamorous, like a Lana Del Rey video. It was something about the heat, the palm trees, the desert vegetation, and the wild jagged red rocks jutting up beyond the manicured city proper. The desert is beautiful.
Dean and I guiltily but obsessively chewed through both seasons of Cupcake Wars on Netflix, and through a fluke internet search, we discovered that there is a Sprinkles Cupcakes (which was started by one of the Cupcake Wars judges) in Scottsdale, about 20 minutes outside of Phoenix! A forty-minute detour on the way to Sedona was worth it for us to test Candice's mettle.
We bought six cupcakes: pumpkin, chai, and chocolate marshmallow for me, and strawberry cheesecake, s'mores, and vanilla milk chocolate for Dean.
I am not exaggerating in the least that THESE WERE THE BEST CUPCAKES I'VE EVER HAD TIMES TWENTY. Touché, Candice. Touché.
Sprinkles was not only the first cupcake bakery, but it is also home of the first Cupcake ATM, which is a machine outside the store that allows you to buy cupcakes anytime of the day or night. We only bought five inside the store because we specifically wanted to use the ATM at least once. You pick your order on the screen (you can order multiple cupcakes at once), and then a video plays of the robot arm in the machine selecting your cupcake and placing it in the cubby on the right. Then the door pops open and tada!
The rest of the night did not go as well, however. We had to battle our way through Phoenix rush hour to get to Sedona, where the life-changing Vietnamese place my mother has been raving about since she ate there last fall was closed 45 minutes early. Dean and I were pretty furious, since there's not a lot in the way of interesting restaurants in Sedona, and we could've eaten somewhere in Phoenix instead of having to choose between a generic Chinese place and a generic Irish pub (we chose Chinese, btw). At least the company and the scenery were awesome.
Day 2
Up at 3 to drive the two hours to the Grand Canyon for our tour beginning at 6. We were signed up for the Scenic Canyon River Adventure Tour with Grand Canyon Scenic Airlines, a 12-hour gauntlet that began with a vistaliner flight to Lake Powell that took us over the Grand Canyon, Marble Canyon, and Glen Canyon. Sounds cool, but it's actually difficult to grasp the sheer enormity of the canyons from a plane, so it wasn't as awe-inspiring as it could've been. We saw Horseshoe Bend, although I didn't get a picture since it was on the other side of the plane. If you're ever gonna take this tour, request that you sit in an A seat or else you'll miss a lot. :-/
Lake Powell
Next was my favorite thing on the trip: Antelope Canyon! It's pretty famous, especially since it was used as a shooting location in 127 Hours. We rode in the back of a truck out into the desert, where we ventured into this unassuming slit in the rock and ended up in a surreal wonderland.
Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon created by the wind and flash floods. You can see the evidence of this in the walls, which are textured such that you can actually see the direction the wind was blowing when a particular part of the canyon wall was created.
We got lucky and our tour finished just as the canyon was flooded with 12 trucks worth of tourists, so I got some truly pristine shots.
Glen Canyon Dam. The walls here are 700 feet high.
We were then bussed to Glen Canyon Dam (the dam which created Lake Powell) and were given sandwiches and seated on a pontoon raft. During the fifteen miles of smooth water between the dam and the historical Lee's Ferry, our guide pointed out wildlife to us and told us about the history of the dam and the canyon. It was interesting, and the area beautiful, but three hours in, everything was starting to run together and our legs were really starting to cramp. We were really relieved when Lee's Ferry came into sight and we were finally able to get off the boat and stretch our legs.
The highlight of the ride was getting to see petroglyphs carved into the walls of the canyon.
These petroglyphs of bighorn sheep were created by the "desert people" who lived in the canyon before the Puebloans.
Note the stylistic differences between these and the previous glyphs - these were made much later, by the Puebloans (popularly called the Anasazi, but that term is not preferred by the Puebloan people). They show pronghorn antelope.
These walls are 1000 feet high! It's hard to gauge scale down here.
This is the longest straight part of the river at two miles. It is imaginatively called Two-Mile Stretch.
The tour advertised itself as 12 hours, but what it doesn't make very clear is that the last 4-5 hours are just a bus ride from Lee's Ferry back to Grand Canyon Airport, where we began. We still felt like we got our money's worth, and honestly after the boat ride that wouldn't end, falling asleep on an air-conditioned bus was welcome, but still... it felt a little dishonest.
After we were dropped off, we drove to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to see it on our own two feet. I am not a person who is phased much by heights, but it is dizzying. We puttered around waiting for our dinner reservation, hoping to see the sunset, but it got cloudy.
Plague!
Day 3
Today was thankfully a lot less exhausting than yesterday! We actually got to sleep until after the sun came up! We started the day at Slide Rock State Park. We've been reminded again and again this weekend what a great time we chose to come to Sedona. There were no crowds at the Grand Canyon, we got right in (the clerk there told us it's a 45-minute wait outside the gate during summer), and today the ranger at Slide Rock told us that the cars waiting to come in would be 200 feet up the highway come summer! Dean and I "cheated" because it's a $20 car fee and parked further down the road and walked in. We paid admission ($3/person), but we could've easily walked in and no one would've noticed. In fact, the ranger seemed kinda surprised we were even talking to him. We're honest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Slide Rock is an 80-foot natural waterslide made out of smooth red sandstone and freezing cold river water. It was a blast, although my legs are really bruised now.
We heard an advertisement on the radio for Verde Valley Fair in the car which mentioned livestock, and since I am a sucker for anything with animals, we spent the afternoon in Cottonwood looking at farm animals and riding carnival rides. Kind of a weird thing to do on a vacation, I guess. Maybe we should've gone on a hike. Still - animals!
We got our first really good food since Sprinkles finally at a hole-in-the-wall called Simon's Hotdogs.
We brought our hot dogs (Dean's smothered in pineapple, crumbled potato chips, and mozzarella, mine with teriyaki onions, wasabi mayo, and toasted sushi nori) up to Airport Mesa to watch the sunset. Thanks for the great last impression, Sedona.
P.S. We got more cupcakes on the drive back to Phoenix at 2 in the morning. Thank you, Sprinkles Cupcake ATM.
