Panaca, Nevada

I will try to finish this trip asap since it has been several weeks now.  Has my new obsession with lightroom effects and collages gotten annoying yet?  Natalie, we just all want to be like you!

Monday morning we played some Hand and Foot with Grandma and Grandpa Grisham and then headed to Panaca, Nevada to take Kate’s car to her uncle’s house to fix.  Panaca is about twice the size as Manila, but still teensy tiny.  We absolutely loved it there!  I think this was everyone’s favorite day of the trip.

When we first got there, I was quite distressed.  I don’t actually remember being distressed, but I must have been because look at my faces!

First, note the movement between these two pictures.  It is obvious that there must have been at least 3 seconds between the first and the second picture.

Yet, my face doesn’t really change.  Does my face look like that in my natural state!?!?!

Jeff was far less distressed and wooed their dog quite quickly.  

Kate’s uncle and aunt decided to give us the grand tour of Panaca.  I’m glad they were in charge because turns out, Panaca is really cool and filled with amazing things!

First, we went to the natural springs.  It was extremely warm, but not like a hot tub or anything, although apparently it’s that way in the summer.  There were like a million little fish in it and they would come up when you held your foot in there for awhile and eat off your toes.  It was super tickly.   I tried to catch one (see below) but gave up after about 5 minutes.  Fast little stinkers.

We were sitting on these stairs on one side of the spring and Bryndee and Josh were at the other end sitting on this sloped concrete wall.  It was extremely stable until it hit the water and then it was pure moss.  I went over to see how their side was and right as I got over there, Bryndee started to slide down the wall.  All the way into the spring!

Poor Bryndee.  She had her phone and camera on her and everything!  Good thing it was a warm spring instead of a freezing cold river.

She can pull off my shorts and Josh D.’s shirt though can’t she?

Meanwhile, I put on a show for Kate.    It had already been a super good day, but then they took us to what was my favorite part of the entire trip: Cathedral Gorge.

Cathedral Gorge is basically clay formations that were hard enough that you could climb on them.  They also had these pathways through them.  Apparently at one point there were Shakespeare plays performed with the formations in the background and the actors would change in the pathways.

You can see that the pathways were pretty skinny.  We went through some tunnels too and there was a wall we could “rock climb” up.  I liked going up it, but I was a total pansy on the way down.  I think I’m pretty afraid of heights.  Arg.

 

Aren't the sand formations amazing!?  Kaitlan said the background to the picture she’s in looks like Star Wars.  Course, she has never seen Star Wars…

We had a great time at this part, and spent well over an hour climbing all around the formations and taking pictures.  About the collage below- Jeff is also our friend, although he disappeared for awhile finding a more hardcore route down.

I love these two girls. They are the best friends that I could ask for and I can’t wait to live with them in the spring again!  Thanks goes to them for such an awesome weekend.  :)

   

On Friday, when we decided we needed more boys on the trip and so I called Jeff, probably the most convincing thing I had to get him to come was the fact that we were going to go 4-wheeling.  Unfortunately, when we got to Panaca, Kate’s uncle told us that he didn’t know if he could get them started up right away since they had sat all the winter without being used.

Jeff was devastated.

So much so that we ended up practically begging Kate’s uncle to get them started.  Luckily he is a saint, so he obliged and so we went 4-wheeling.  Fortunately for you, I’m pretty tired of blogging and so I'll only put a few pictures up.  Here’s one of Kate and Kaitlan at the sand dunes.

There was also this bush that people jump over.  Maybe I should explain that better.  THere’s a pretty significant drop at the end of the sand dune pit.  Here’s a picture of Jeff to show you what I mean:

Anyway so there’s a bush that you run and jump over and since there is that huge edge, when you jump over the bush, you feel like you are jumping off a huge cliff and then you fall a while and then fall into the sand.  It was pretty cool.  One of us wasn’t very good at it though.  Can you guess who?

Here’s everyone’s take-offs.  Don’t they look great!? 

Only one person landed like this:

 

I am so graceful.  I was practically sitting on the bush on the way down I jumped so low…

The last thing we did was go see some chalk caves.  These were really cool.  Apparently the kids have group dates in here after dances or whatever and bring a generator and a projector and watch movies on the walls, which we all thought was amazing.

Then we headed home. We got home at about 11pm, which made it a 3.5 day vacation!  It was nice to get away from homework and out of Provo and it was an awesome trip!