life in... Ohio?

Hello friends, family, and friends of my family!
Since the last post, I've been in Ohio. It's not very exciting here, but it was nice to come home and be able to sleep indoors again! Micah and I visited Wooster, also. It was really nice to see all my friends from school again. We even got taken out for dinner and breakfast while we were there (not to mention tons of stolen food from the cafeteria)!
After being at home again for a while (and watching at least one movie a day due to boredom), we decided to face the cold and head down to good ol' West Virginee. We spent 5 days there (the temps only breaking 50 one day, and the low being 16 one night), and despite the cold, had a great time. It was great to see Roger, the campground host, again, and all the guys from the Pies & Pints kitchen, and we did some fantastic bouldering. Unfortunately, this was a spur of the moment post, so I'm not using the computer with the pictures or video on it, but Micah already posted them at www.chetroy.com/home/blog.html. The video's really just a trailer for our full video that we'll make later when we add more footage in early January.

Peace out homies. I love you all!
-Stella!

Hueco!

These previous pictures are of the miracle we saw. If you look close enough, you can see the beams of light converging onto the location of the miracle.


Next are some of the extremely few Hueco pictures we took. The first is on the Donkey Show boulder of East Mountain.

The second is this V9 in the Maze on the East Spur. No, I didn't send, but I could get my fingers to go way further back in these holds than most people can.

Here's the beta on Hueco for anyone that's interested:
Only 170 (I think) people are let into the park each day. North Mountain is the only place you can go without a guide, but it's HUGE, so it's not too bad. I think a total of 70 people can be on North Mountain at one time. East Mountain, West Mountain, and East Spur require guides. You can take a free tour with volunteer guides offered by the park, or a $20-a-person tour offered by the campground (Hueco Rock Ranch). 10 tours can be out per day (100 people). Depending on the time of year, it can be super easy or impossible to get into the park without waking up at 5:30am each day. When we were there, it was super easy. One way to ensure you get into the park, is to make reservations at least 3 months in advance. You pay the park money for these reservations, then get the money back each day you show up for your reservation. As far as I know, you can reserve volunteer and commercial tours too, but we never did that.
Reason to pay for commercial tours instead of just doing volunteer tours: both are good, but the commercial tourguides know where everything is, and the easiest way to get you there, whereas a volunteer tourguide may not. **don't forget that it's customary to tip your tourguide**

Okay, Micah put up our sweet Hueco video, so go to Chetroy.com to see it. It's one of my favorite movies so far.

I love you all!
-Stella

after Joe's

well, here's some pictures:

those were of Indian Creek. The last picture doesn't look real, but the green ball was just an airsoft pellet that was hanging out there. The things are everywhere!



These were a bunch from Arches National Park. We did the sweet hike that almost all the arches were in, than a small hike to see Delicate Arch from afar.

We saw lots of wildflowers too!


Then it was off to Bryce Canyon National Park - the scenery was amazing!:


Zion National Park came next. It was so out of place in the desert with all it's trees and water (Ross, I think even YOU'd like it. Also, some of these geology pictures were taken with Sophie in mind):


After Zion, Red Rocks, NV is still cool, but not nearly as beautiful (in other words, we didn't take very many pictures). Micah wasn't looking forward to going there, but soon he was asking to stay longer! We were there over Thanksgiving and we got to meet some awesome people! Danny Rider (has been putting up FAs in Red Rocks for 25 years) and Aaron (hie daughter's boyfriend) were bouldering the day before Thanksgiving near us. When they found out we'd been on the road for 3 months, they invited us right over for Thanksgiving dinner the next night!! It was amazing to have good, homecooked food for the holiday. Anyway, here's some Red Rocks pictures:


And the drive down to Hueco: Also, we saw some beams of light (like sunlight breaking through clouds) coming from the ground (to the east... in the evening). My guess is that Jesus was reborn at that spot. We forgot to add the picture to the computer, but it probably didn't look like much anyway.

Well, this is our last stop: Hueco. We'll be home within 10 days! But the adventure isn't over yet. We've got some visiting to do in Columbus, Wooster, Cleveland, Central Pennsylvania, the New, then onto Chattanooga for the winter. Spring break with WOODS, then a climbing tour of the Northwest USA next summer! I'll try to write again soon!
I love you all,
Stella
PS: Micah made an awesome movie of Red Rocks and our quick trip to Oak Flat (bouldering area at Queen Creek and home of the old Phoenix Bouldering Comp. You'll be happy to note that nothing got stolen out of our car, even though I have had previous problems with the area).

You can find the movie at chetroy.com in the blog section. Also, I added a permanent link to chetroy.com so you can always find it.