Walkabout: Days 1 & 2

Well, I had a nice post almost ready to publish and then my lovely computer freaked out (possibly operator error) deleted my first three paragraphs of text.  So...now you just get the good stuff--pictures  :)

These are pictures from the first day of Walkabout (after a 4am wake-up call and a 7 hour car ride).  Our first day's task was rock climbing!  Now, when I say "rock climbing" I don't mean the R.E.I. rock wall kind of rock climbing.  I mean something more along the lines of  I need to harness myself up really well because I am going to be scaling a HUGE rock straight up in the air at an elevation of 6,500 feet kind of rock climbing.  Get the picture?  Well, if you don't, take a look at these  :)

Let me introduce you to the team.

(L to R: Kelly [1 of our guides], Natie Jane, Chris, Christina, Tyler, Shayna, Chelsea, me, Tori, Sean, Colton)

Beautiful.  Absolutely beautiful.

THAT is me.  Owning this dang rock.

What I'm doing is called belaying.  

It's basically being a lifeline to the person climbing.  

The team trying to stay cool while others are climbing.

Chels on her way back down.

Colton--he did so great.  I couldn't keep up with his pace while I was belaying him.

It looks like they're racing, but they're really not  :)

Me trying to figure out how in the world I am getting over that cliff.

I MADE IT!!!

A closer up, poorer quality picture  :)

Though rock climbing was definitely FUN, I also learned a lot.  I learned to pay attention to details and look for small little indentations in the rock--they're all over.  My first time up, I only looked for really obvious places to put my feet.  The problem is that the obvious ones don't come very often at all and usually there's no where to go from there.  I think that's a lot like life.  So often we want the easy road.  We spend so much of our time looking for the easy way to get somewhere and all along, we miss small, consistent opportunities to get there faster.  Great life lesson.  Who woulda thunk I would learn that rock climbing  :)

I will post pictures of repelling later; someone else on our team has those as of now.  Anyway, I gotta jet for now, but be checking in this weekend, I'm feelin another blog post comin on :)

Love you all.