Hiking Arches National Park

If ‘Mars’ was beautiful, then Arches NP was absolutely breath-taking. I stopped in for a couple of hikes on the way back from my space mission – I’m glad (but slightly guiltily so) that I had this ridiculous rental SUV to help with all the off-roading.

The park is simply astounding – home to thousands of sandstone columns, mesas, bluffs, cliffs, hills and (naturally) arches, carved into the most amazing shapes by years of wind and rain.

This one above is called Park Avenue, and Balanced Rock below is pretty famous, too.

If some of these look familiar, it’s because they’ve been in dozens of films, including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

This was at the end of my favourite bit – a long walk on a ‘primitive’ trail that involved scrambling over slick rock with some scary drops, seeing eagles soaring over the cliffs and just feeling really close to the desert. It’s right at the end of the park, about 20 miles in.

This is also on the primitive trail. Navigating the canyons took a steady nerve (and a large bottle of water).

A night on Mars

Last weekend, I popped over to Mars for the night. Mars, in this case, is located about 200 miles from Grand Junction, Colorado in the middle of the Utah desert.

The Mars Desert Research Station is home to a rotating crew of six astronauts simulating what life may be life for early explorers to the Red Planet. The crew can’t even leave the ‘Hab’ (Habitat) without putting on spacesuits and going through an airlock procedure.

I had a great time hanging out with the scientists, students and space geeks, as well as exploring the surrounding hills on ‘Mars Rovers’ (ATVs). They’re a really enthusiastic bunch

This is Nori collecting specimens of ‘Mars’ rock…

 

And here I am in my spacesuit! As you can imagine, it was extremely hot in the sunny weather.

Brooklyn and Manhattan

We managed to get out and see the city, too, spending a day in Brooklyn and a couple of afternoons looking round the Village.

Trust Dad to find the only bit of Williamsburg bridge without fencing in the way of a good photo!

We had an evening with MaryAnn, Kenny (above), Melissa, Melanie, AnnMarie & Jordan, Dad and Charlie in the swanky W Hotel bar in Times Square. Maximum catching up in minimum time!

Cool art-heist of bike lanes in Brooklyn, and we even saw Spidey…

Family weekend in New York

We just had a long weekend out in New York, particularly to see Dad who was in town for the St Patrick’s Day parades but also to show off my lovely new wife to the extended Harris clan.

We stayed with Gerrie and Bernie in the idyll of Westchester, and had Charlie and Tom as private chauffeurs – we were pampered!

There’s Dad in the background taking pictures as usual!

Here’s Bernie in the process of making some delicious apple pancakes. We certainly ate well…

Here’s Jennifer and Joey – they’re getting married in 2010.

Sound off for soccer…

Karen got tickets to the debut match of the Seattle Sounders return to MLS (Major League Soccer) at the Qwest Stadium (thanks, Scott!).

It was a glitzy affair, with appearances from the Governor, comedian Drew Carey – but not major signing Freddie Ljungberg. We were in the all-inclusive zone and got all the nachos, pretzels and fizzy drinks we could stomach (not a huge amount, but a nice idea).

Everyone had a brand new lime green Sounders scarf and the funniest thing was the fireworks and glitter bombs that went off whenever Seattle scored a goal. By the time we hammered the New York Red Bulls 3-0, the pitch looked like a nightclub…