Yesterday, Leah and I arrived safely in Seoul. The plane, a 777-200, was not one of the new, 50-percent-more-space-per-person that I had thought, but rather a workhorse of the overseas industry. Seating arrangements, duration and the uninspired food reminded me of the flights from SFO to Munich I used to take for work when we lived in Italy. Leah wisely missed the uninspired food by ordering Indian vegetarian meals, which looked great. Unfortunately, the second meal remained uneaten. Leah had started to slump in her seat, tired and a bit airsick.

I had forgotten how sick she really gets from travel. Her sickness only got worse on the one hour bus trip from the international airporat in Incheon to Seoul. Just before our bus stop at An-Guk subway station, she was coiled over her backpack. If I asked her how she felt, her arm would slowly rise and her hand would move a bit from side to side to indicate she was so-so (or, maybe she was trying to form a fist to punch me for asking such a silly question; it's difficult to say.) Once we were on our feet moving toward the hotel, she started feeling much better.

Our first choice, a backpacker's hostel, did not have a double available, so we ended up at a quiet hotel only a minute down the very narrow road. The room only cost a few dollars more and surprisingly, proves that Korea is indeed the most wired country. We have a flat screen computer with free internet in our room, a luxurious whirlpool bath/shower, a very nice (and firm) bed, and an enormous flat screen TV. In fact, the screen is about half the width of the wall, which reminds me of a mathematical truth: as the ratio of the TV size to the room size approaches 1, the more likely you are to dream that you live in a cheesy sci-fi TV series. Or, maybe the dream was because I didn't sleep well on the plane.

For a moderately priced room, there are also needlessly fancy automatic lights, which tend to turn off at the wrong times. There are also a myriad of sundries: toothbrushes, hairgel (in case you were wondering, my hair looks the same with the hairgel in), electric kettle (which, with our pot, we used to make noodles) and a condom. And, there is an unusually shaped mini-fridge too close to the computer, which was the source of a odd arguement. I'll omit most of the details, but here are the key comments, "The computer is on, Leah! That's the refridgerator, David!" In my defense, I have been out of the electronics field for a year.

Well that's enough about the room. Hopefully, today, after exploring Seoul, I'll have something more interesting to write.

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The post title is not one we made up (despite David's great wit), but something we saw on a sign in Arches National Park in Utah. We had a great time on the trip. We camped and hiked for about a week, partly in preparation for the camping and hiking we'll be doing this summer and partly just because we wanted to. I've never spent much time in Utah, but everyone who's been has talked about how gorgeous it is and how good the hiking is, so I thought we should go. David thought I was a little weird about it, since he grew up going to Zion and Bryce fairly often (it's nice to know growing up in Vegas has it's advantages!).

We went to Arches first, which surprised us because it was PACKED! I felt so silly--I had somehow assumed that peak season wouldn't start till after Memorial Day, so we'd have plenty of space in the campsites and there wouldn't be a long line on all of the hikes. I was wrong on both accounts. We ended up staying on BLM land for most of the week since the campgrounds in the parks were all full, and we saw a lot of other hikers while we were out. Having said that, we had a great time and are already planning our next trip, which we'll try to do in the off-season.

One of the neatest things about the trip was learning about cryptobiotica, the thin, fragile crust that protects the desert. We knew the desert was really delicate and the ATVs and cars (or even footprints) last for a generation, but we didn't know why. It turns out the 'crypto' is what is so fragile. It's made largely of silicon, but also has some sort of bacteria that actually "fuses" the grains to one another to form a protective layer that keeps the sand from blowing away and therefore nourishes the plants that grow in it by keeping water in. If the crust is broken, though, the sand starts blowing and if it's broken in large chunks, the sand will blow to cover the adjacent crypto, thus starving it of oxygen and killing it, too. Judy, our ranger guide for the fiery furnace hike (too many people have damaged the rocks, so you have to go on a guided hike or buy a permit), told us a cute saying the rangers have, "Tip-toe 'round the crypto and don't bust the crust."

While Arches was beautiful, our favorite park was Capitol Reef, pictured below. You can do free backcountry camping (not that we had time), there are tons of trails, maintained or otherwise, and the primative campground in the south of the park was beautifully placed. Our favorite hike, though, was the 9 mile loop of Lost Canyon in the Needles district of Canyonlands. It went from high desert to a lush valley with running water (and lots of mosquitoes!) to slickrock.

We really hope to go back soon, especially since we missed so many other parks, not to mention all of the areas we didn't get to in the 3 parks we did manage to spend some time in. A week was definitely not enough! But we were unbelievably foul by the end of the week without showers, and while it was great practice for this summer, we were in need of some hot water.

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Eleanor, my youngest sister, graduated from San Francisco State U. this weekend with a masters in psychology. We missed her undergrad graduation since I was in Morocco and David was in Italy, so we couldn't very well miss this one, even if we had a great excuse. Instead, since we'd already decided our next big trip was to Asia, we just arranged to fly out of SFO, which we thought would work perfectly.

We needed to get to San Fran, though, so we thought we'd do a combined "camp in Utah" and "see family" trip across the country. To that end, we flew to Wichita and visited with John and Rosie, old friends of Papa's, and then drove to Denver to see various cousins, which was a lot of fun. We then hiked in Utah (see Geology Happens), which was fabulous before heading to Las Vegas to see David's family and some of my cousins, before leaving for San Fran.

This all sounded like an excellent plan before we actually started on the trip. But then we had to pack. Not only did we have to pack for Asia, we had to pack for the U.S., which included camping and a fancy graduation party, two rather dissimilar events. The resulting packing frenzy was not pretty (pictured above), but David's such an engineer that we had to lay it all out. We made it, though, and now we leave tomorrow for Seoul. We have three months in South Korea and China. We're excited!

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Thanks to our fabulous friend Amy, we now have this website, which we thought might be a better way to share travel information than the mass emails. If nothing else, it means no more flooding of inboxes every summer. Also, it means I don't have to feel like you're all just dying to hear what we have to say, when you probably have other things to do.

We're planning on posting pictures in addition to writing once a week or so, so come back when you want and enjoy!

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We shall not cease from exploring, and at the end of our exploration, we will return to where we started, and know the place for the first time. -T.S. Eliot

Becoming, never being, till / Becoming is a being still. -Stanley Kunitz

...I’ve seen a lot of people and places, and at least I have a somewhat more detailed and precise idea of my ignorance than I did in the beginning. -Paul Bowles

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