Amy and I just signed a lease… currently my boss is letting us live at one of the climbing gyms… but in 3 weeks we’ll finally have a home after 3 1/2 months of homelessness.. We are psyched… Thanks for all the positive energy!
August 3rd
I’m sitting in a coffee shop that thought it would be cute to do a clever play on words for it’s name in Berkeley, CA.
I enjoy clever plays on words, and I enjoy big luscious couches, throw in free internet and a blueberry scone and we are talking about near perfection.
Amy is currently at Core Power Yoga meeting with a lady about setting up a work for trade agreement. There has been a definitive lack of stretching and bending on this trip, I feel that is all about to end. Rubber band like flexibility, here Amy comes.
And so, without Amy to monitor my behavior in public, as she’s been doing for the past two months, I find myself captain of my own ship and the freedom is intoxicating. I’m trying to keep it together, but I find myself wanting to test whether Berkeley really is the most liberal city in the world.
Before I go frolicking through the streets with my underpants around my head like a bandana, however… I feel it would be beneficial to recap the last week or so for you guys.
Oh, and what a week or so it’s been. I think our last update was in Zion, so that’s where I’ll pick things up like a Giraffe who has dropped his stick.
Now, upon exiting Zion we skittered across the great state of Nevada like a Jesus Lizard. We watched the temperature gauge on the car hover around 110 degrees for the entire drive, during which time I came to the conclusion that the only reason to ever go to Nevada is too die..
Seriously, God or whoever, did not intend for humans to live in that state… ugh..
We came catapulting across the Californian state line… a little lady at the state line tried to stop us as she searched our car for signs of fresh produce or a pet..any reason at all to send us back to the great state of death.. but Amy and I had our sites set on living, and so we gunned it across the state line with police and border patrol in hot pursuit..
Preferring to go out in a grand gesture of defiance, we opted to drive the car off the nearest cliff into certain doom rather than be taken into custody for our embezzlement of fresh watermelons.
Erupting in a monstrous fireball upon coming into contact with the ground, Amy and I found ourselves fleeing the burning wreckage of our once trusty stead.. finding ourselves in Death Valley with no car, things began looking pretty dim.
But hey, next thing ya know we found ourselves in San Diego at my parents place. After a couple days conversating with 5 and 6 year olds, we found ourselves wishing for Nevada…
Just kidding!!!! My parents house was actually really great.. We got to see my baby brother and sister, Logan and Breanna…(I think I spelled Bre’s name wrong, and she will be upset… so I apologize in advance). This was Logan and Breanna’s first time meeting Amy who, for the first few days, they kept calling Jenny.
Great….
Possibly the highlight of the trip was going out to lunch with my Grandma who I havent seen in 10 years.. This was accompanied by a bit of stress on account of my Grandma never having met one of my partners, but my Grandma took to Amy more than she took to me…Next thing I know my Grandma is giving Amy a giant decorative Fork and Spoon that has been hanging on her wall for the past 40 years or so, after I mention in passing that Amy has a thing for forks and spoons. Grandma is pretty cool, and we’re psyched to be living somewhat close to her and my family so we can make some visits down to see them.
Our time in San Diego was not particularly restful.. My step-mom, Sharyl, is always an overachieving host. She is like a heat seeking missile whose only target is to make sure we are having a good time. Our last two days in San Diego were jammed packed full of goodness.. We found ourselves watching Condors spread their 9 foot wingspans, and Giraffes hug as only Giraffes can do, and a baby elephant get stuck walking over a log and resolve to shuffle sideways to get off it at the San Diego Zoo Wild Life Park. I’m sure Amy has a ton of pictures that she will be posting. The next day we fulfilled every childs dream, and went to DisneyLand!!!! Well, not actually Disney Land, but Californian Adventure right next to DisneyLand.. its a bit more adult oriented….
Amy and I have been discussing going to an amusement park for the past couple of weeks, so this was muchly anticipated.. We rode on the tower of terror, twice… once with Bre sitting next to us, the second time with Logan… this was the highlight of our visit… Logan was keeping everything together like a trooper on the ride, until the very last drop, at which point we looked over at him with eyes wide as saucers, clinging his arms and legs to anything clingable, and the beginning of tears that can come only from the realization that life is too short… but the ride stopped, he got his composure and was smiling and laughing as if nothing happened.. oh, but I remember… I’ll always remember..
Oh, and Breanna told us how she made out with her nephew… I’m saving that story for when she is older though.
During our time in San Diego, Amy and I got haircuts to make ourselves more appropriate for Berkeley and job searching, and started working our way through the Harry Potter series of movies… which oddly enough Amy had never seen…. after the first movie she turns to me and says, “I love Harry Potter!!!”
I think she might be hooked.. 
I’m gonna skip forward a bit, and I know I’m missing a ton of things that have happened along the way, but you’ll just have to make due..
We got into Berkeley/San Francisco two nights ago… It was a clear, beautiful night and we had perfect visibility of the city lights and bridges from our campsite which sits on a cliff high above the city.
Not realizing how expensive the bridge tolls are… we currently find ourselves figuring out how to get fast passes for the tolls and BART passes.. BART is the train system here in the Bay Area, and we will probably be spending alot of time utilizing it… that and a scooter..
It seems like a scooter is going to be the preferred means of transportation around here so we are currently looking to get one.
Finding a place to stay while looking for housing has also been a challenge.. we are currently camping at a location that will only allow us to stay 3 nights out of the year.. tonight is our last night, and then we are officially homeless, living out of the car…
Though technically it turns out we didnt stay at the campsite our first night… as we found out last night when a couple Park Rangers asked us to step out of the tent around 11pm in the pitch dark. They proceeded to inform us that we were camping in the picnic area and that the campsite was elsewhere… whoops..
The Park Rangers were not very nice, by the way.. They were treating us like criminals that were about to attack them. Not cool.
Anyways, yesterday I had an interview and got offered the job on the spot, so that has taken a large amount of stress off of our shoulders. All our efforts can be put towards finding a place to live now.. Yesterday we drove allllll around the bay area, up and down the residential streets, looking for “For rent” signs… we have a couple viewings lined up for this evening, so keep your fingers crossed…. a couple of the places are kinda promising, and I know not having a location to call home is a bit stressful to Amy so hopefully we can find something by the end of this week… Wish us luck..
Keep in mind if you know anybody in the Bay area who has a yard….we love camping in yards…
Well, I think this is an adequate blog post.. Alot of things got skimmed over, such as how we escaped Death Valley, but that will just have to wait a week for Amy’s update.
Goodbye…. or as Amy would say,
“Til Next Time, XOOxoxoxoXOxoxoxoxoxoxoxoXOxoxoXoXOXOXoXo”
That is a direct quote, p.s.
Leaving Maple Canyon
Hello there~!
Well we were planning on staying in Maple Canyon for a few more days, however when we woke up this morning we both came to the conclusion that we have climbed out our excitement in this area. Don’t get me wrong, Maple Canyon is an amazing place, but we are ready to move on.
We are planning on staying the night in Zion National Park, and doing a few sport climbs there tomorrow!
The pictures I posted were from the last week at Maple, we were unable to get more pictures of us climbing, simply because we only climbed with the other Minnesotans one day and my phone was dead!!!! eeekkk sorry. We did get to hang out with them at their campsite and we had a fire and some smores.. Thanks Kelly
But, we did get plenty of pictures of the cows. This morning while leaving the canyon we came upon a few cowboys moving their cattle. We thought we would be stuck behind them for hours, until the oldest cowboy encouraged us to drive straight through the herd. Let me tell you…. this was the most interesting experience, the cows did not move out of the way very well.. so we got a few stare downs with the cows.. none of the pictures below are zoomed in…
(Shout out to MIKE!!!! FIREWORK is on…… missing you pal!!! xoxoxoxoxoxoxo)
SO about the last week….. we have been climbing pretty hard.. and sport climbing for a month pretty much everyday will take its toll on the body. My climbing was suffering… and my mental strength was draining. However Ant seems to blossom in this type of stress… so he has been climbing pretty strong making some great progress on a few of his projects.
We went to lake Yuba for a rest day again, and we both got sunburned despite applying sunscreen. It could have been because we laid on our rafts for about 4 hours!!! super fun and really really relaxing.
We didn’t end up going to the other rodeo, we decided to save our money for a theme park or water park in California! Ant has decided to stay in the San Fran area, which I am excited about, it will be nice to know someone else there… he has been applying to all the climbing gyms in the area… (i think there is about 5) great place for climbers. We are also excited about all the new areas we get to call our home climbing areas!!!!!
We went to see Captain America at the local theatre…We have also been renting movies from the red box… (The girl who plays with fire, The Bounty Hunter, The vampire assistant, and Just go with it.)
Alrighty, well I think that is about it, as for whats to come… Zion National Park for a day, then we are heading to visit some of Ants family in San diego area. We were hoping to go to sea world but we found the tickets are 70each and that does not include swimming with the whales so we will not be going.. Then from San diego we are heading to San Fran… we have plans to camp for the first couple days. We are going to be looking for jobs and trying to find a place to stay for the month of August, while we can come up with the money for a deposit or rent of some sort…
So if you know of anyone in the area looking for some house guest.. we will clean..house sit, dog sit, perform a comedy show each night, hunt squirrels, and much more… let us know!!!
PS, we are missing each and everyone of you… xoxoxoxoxoxo and think about you often…
Later Gator!!!
AIms
Maple ……our last couple days…..
July 15th
Its been over a week since our last update, and we’ve been feeling terrible about keeping our faithful readers in the dark as to our happenings… Well, in the last week not much has happened… we find ourselves still in Maple Canyon, UT.
We love it here.. the climbing, the area, everything… just love it… so that’s the explanation for our long stay here..
We’ve made a few changes to our loose itinerary. Originally we planned on leaving Maple and going to Zion for a few days and then to Vegas for a couple days… A combination of loving Maple so much, and being short on money, has dictated that we are going to be staying in Maple for another 2 weeks and then head to Zion for a day, and then head to San Diego to visit my family for a few days.
Here’s a couple of interesting things of note…
First, and most amazing, Amy sent her first 12c!!!! Wowzers… that is a mighty impressive accomplishment for somebody who has been climbing less than a year… She has finally hit her groove here, it seems, and she is crushing 11d’s and 12a’s within a try or two… it’s kindve mind boggling how impressive this is for those who dont understand climbing grades. She has also been hopping on pretty much every 13 I get on, so it’s just a matter of time til she really sets the world on fire by sending her first 13!!!
Second, we are starting to even the score with the squirrels.. we went to wal-mart and picked up two BB guns, and so far we have two kills to our record… the squirrels are still spunky, but they are learning to fear us… it’s just a matter of time till they stay away from us entirely..
Third, we have friends coming to Maple.. not to visit us, but they are coming here to climb, so that’s exciting.. we love seeing friends.. They will be here on Sunday, and will be staying for a couple days.. we are excited to crush with them..
Fourth, Amy and I have engineered an awesome tarp situation over our tent which stops the tent from heating up like a sauna in the mornings.. yaay for sleeping in..
Fifth, this is slightly embarrassing.. but we watched the Twilight trilogy in the last three days… and we sorta liked it… gah… what have we become?!?!
Sixth, we are going to go to another Rodeo tomorrow… this Rodeo is supposedly muuuuuch bigger!! Muuuuuuch bigger!! Very psyched..
Seventh, we saw a 160 pound dog… whoa.. that’s bigger than Amy by a good hundred pounds..
Eighth, i’m not sure if we mentioned this in the last post, but I went to my first Drive-in movie, got really sunburned at the public pool in Nephi surrounded by 8 year olds… we were the oldest people in the pool by atleast a decade, we went thrift store shopping and surprisingly didnt by a thing..
Ninth, this isnt really a statement, but rather a question, does anybody know if there are tarantula’s in Utah??? Amy swears she saw one on the tent last night..
Tenth, Amy hasnt worn deoderant in over a week.. She smells bad, or atleast she thinks so..
Eleventh, there will be no pictures until later this week cause it is very difficult taking pictures of each other while holding the rope… though with our friends visiting, we are hoping to have an influx of awesome pictures..
Twelfth, we almost rescued some dumpster cats.. then the next time we came by, we saw there was an entire colony of them… too many cats to save… so little space in the car..
Im sure other exciting things have occurred, but this is all I can recall off the top of my head… so hopefully it serves as yummy brain fodder for all of you following our adventures..
Amy and I had a joke making up contest the other day…. this was my joke…
A puppy walks into a bar occupied by crows.. He walks up to the bartender and asks him for a hammer.. The bartender looks at the puppy and says, “Sorry, this is just a crowbar..”
It was funny, but maybe you had to be there.. til next time, love and peace and everything in between..
Maple july 7th
July 7th
July 7th
Hi,
Well, we just realized it has been a while since our last update, so there is a lot catch up on.
We are still in Maple Canyon, Utah. Same campsite, although squirrels and other medium sized animals have done some rearranging for us. Each day we come back to the campsite from climbing we find a new surprise. We have finally learned that we can not leave anything out.
Squirrels Ant & Amy
10 0 (wait Ant just reminded me that he hit one with a rock)
They have eaten through our cooler, bug net, soap bottle, water container, raid bottle, olive oil, fly traps, beer cans, many bags of garbage, and turned on the stove and wasted a lot of propane. Needless to say our next stop is Walmart for a bb gun!
Sleep weather has been great, until the morning sun hits the tent! We have only had one scare as far as large wildlife goes during the night. I got about 1 hour of sleep that night. We are now sleeping with the hatchet, large spot light, and mace in the tent.
On July 2nd we went to Mt Pleasant for a RODEO!!! Before the rodeo we went to a local bar, The Triangle Bar. We spent a couple hours here talking with the locals, bar owners, and playing some darts and pool! The owners of the bar had an amazing story, they were a young couple expecting their first child. As a counterpart to their bar they also buy snow kites from overseas and sell them to companies in the US. They stock midwest mountaineering with all their kites. For those whom do not know this is a local business in Minneapolis!!! They also host some kind of world cup event for this sport!!! Totally awesome!
The RODEO…..This was a blast, although it was a small town rodeo it was still my first real rodeo! The people watching was amazing as you can tell by some of the pictures we posted! We did not get to see an 8sec bull ride but we did get to see a lot of crazy angry bulls that did not want to be there!!! We also saw some barrel racing, baby cow catching 
and a crazy clown entertainer.
On our last rest day we went to Lake Yuba. It is about 20 minutes from Nephi Utah. This was on the 3rd of July so it was extremely busy with camping families and lots of boats. We bought a day pass and had a great time hanging out in the water and soaking up some sun! Until a storm rolled in and what was a wonderful sandy island, turned into a giant sand storm!! We got out of there fast! The best part was the 7 dollar day pass was that it included a place to take showers!!! we never pass up the opportunity to shower!
On July 4th we climbed during the day..surprise surprise. Then went for a run and headed over to snow college to download the rest of dexter season 4. Yep thats right we are done with dexter until July 18th when season 5 comes out on itunes!! We made dinner on the sidewalk, (beans and rice) and had a six pack of beer! My favorite beer which is polygamy porter a Wasatch beer. After dinner we headed to the firework show in Moroni. It was actually a great show for the small town. We went to the baseball field with the rest of the town. We are totally convinced they are breeding track and cross country children here or there was a massive game of tag going on that we were unaware of. Crazyness… Pictures to follow.
On July 5th I sent my first 12b. I was pretty excited as I did not really have any expectations of sending that day! My next project is a 12c and it should go soon!!!!
In between all of these larger events we have been running everyday and showering at a water pump in Moroni. We also did some laundry and ate at Big T’s and Country Kitchen. The small stream that runs through our campsite has been disapearing making doing the dishes harder but we have still been enjoying pancakes, toast, eggs, or oatmeal in the morning, sandwiches for lunch, and pasta or rice for dinner! We are also meeting a lot of great people. There are a couple other people whom have been climbing here at maple for the last couple weeks. Most of our time is spent at the Pipe Dream Cave,
http://www.mountainproject.com/scripts/Search?query=pipe+dream+cave&Submit=Search
Since we cant take a lot of pictures while climbing I posted a link for those unfamiliar with this area. Although these are not pictures of us, they will give you an idea as to what our days look like.
This is such an amazing place to climb, however the hike up it about 20-30 minutes and Ant likes to call it the death march!!!
Well thats about it!! Missing you all.
Lesson learned….
Just breath, and everything else will happen!
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
Utah. Rodeo. Climbing
Ant playing at emilys
Maple canyon ut
