Awkward and Awesome.... Friday.... again....

Whoops, it's Friday again and I missed the Awkward Awesomeness of Thursday. So we'll do it again today! It really is my favorite blogging day, it's fun to think of all the funny and great things that happened during the week. Hopefully it makes you think of the good from the past week too!

Today I'm doing a Awkward and Awesome Zion's National Park Edition!

Awkward:

• Reading all the signs, all the way up the hike warning us to turn back if we were afraid of heights, um... hello? That's me! But the whole first half of the hike was literally a sidewalk going up the mountain. I can handle a sidewalk! So we pushed forward.
• Reading that 6 people had died on this hike since 2004. What? They died walking up the sidewalk? Confusion. This started making sense as we got passed the sidewalk section of the hike.
  
• We finally reached the portion of the hike where they had to anchor in chains to help you along. What?! I was prepared for a little of this but holy freaking cow. I am confused as to how they can encourage people to do this hike, it's nuts-o crazy town to cross over the last portion.
  

The last half-mile is across a narrow sandstone ridge.

Anchored support chains are attached along some sections of the sheer fin.

Sheer cliffs at high elevations while hiking on a narrow fin.

• We got passed what I thought might be the last portion and then came to a landing where we realized that we had gotten passed the easy part and now had to cross the "narrow fin", which apparently is code for balance beam in the sky. Don't go too far to your right... or your left for that matter or down you go and you'll become the 7th to die. I had a major meltdown. Shaking, crying, there was no way I was going to be able to do this. They were right when they said you shouldn't do this if you had a problem with heights. In my own defense, I may be afraid of heights, but I also didn't really feel like dying either, which I believe is completely reasonable.
  
• Having meltdown #2 when I realized that although I wasn't going on the death march to the top I would have to go back the crazy way we came. Breathe Danielle! We both had on backpacks and Chad had the tripod strapped to his bag. This didn't make balancing on the cliff face very easy. We were stoked once we hit normal ground!
  
• Still confused as to how people were taking their small children with them on this hike. I mean small, like 6 year old kids. I can't imagine us taking a squirrely 6 year old Chad on this hike. We are either huge babies or these people be crazy. We're pretty sure they're crazy.

Awesome:

• Zion's is just awesome in general, it's gorgeous!
• This was a killer workout for my legs, the first 2 miles were all uphill! Translation: No Insanity workout for me that day :)
• At the top of the mountain we saw 2 California Condors. It's one of the world's rarest bird species and there's only 210 alive in the wild. They were HUGE birds, and we got to take some cool pictures of them as the two of them just hung out in a tree.
  
• We stayed pretty late and stargazed for a while. Let's be honest, in Michigan we'd be lucky to get a clear night to see the stars, let alone get a clear night and be somewhere SO dark. It was beautiful out. I have never seen so many stars before!

We, of course, took tons of pictures, and we'll put some up after we edit our favorites! Hope everyone had a great week!