Matthew's Birthday and Ordination

This week was pretty laid-back with lots of work and some play. I had a backcountry call out to a mountain biker that fell and broke his arm near his wrist. He was fine otherwise, so we gave him pain meds, packaged him up, and drove him out on the SAR rhino to our ambulance. It was a pretty uneventful call, but I really enjoy using 4WD to get out to a patient and treating them in the wilderness. I'm so lucky to get these cool opportunities.

For Matthew's birthday, Dani gave him a trip down the river with a buddy, so we took some duckies after work and floated the rapids. Matthew and his friend Everett had a blast exploring side-streams and swimming and they had some great hits. At the take-out they had fun playing in the water while I hitch-hiked back to get our truck from the put-in.

Everett and Matthew after a successful run of Cloudburst.

While exploring they found some tiny reptiles!

It was his 12th birthday, so he was ordained a deacon today after church. Bishop Garrett remarked that he remembers when Matthew was born, and now he's the last of the Andrew boys to receive the priesthood!

MORE hiking?

After a week of recovery from our big hike, I hit the trail again with my dad, who is training for his rim-to-rim trek at the end of June. We hiked from Hidden Valley to the Moab Rim, and after scrambling around off trail it ended up being about 8.5 miles and almost 1000 ft elevation gain and loss. At the end of the Hidden Valley trail we visited some neat petroglyphs that I've never noticed before. There were a lot of desert critters, including a couple of bull snakes. It was a lot of fun to spend the time with my dad, and I'm looking forward to helping him train more.

My dad and I have very similar hiking styles. If we see something that looks cool, we'll go explore it... even if it takes us off the trail for hours, scrambling up rocks on the edge of a cliff, while jumping through pokey bushes. Unfortunately, we've both burned bridges with the rest of our family (who--for some reason--don't appreciate these kinds of adventures), but we sure enjoy exploring together!

That evening after Dani got off the river we went over to the Moab Arts Fest and bumped into one of our old buddies, Jason, who was selling some of his ceramics. We invited him and his new wife to float the river with us on Memorial Day before they left town. One of my other friends, Sheena, was in town for the weekend with her husband, so we invited them too.

On Monday, Dani and I grabbed a few inflatable kayaks from the Hazlett's and met up with our friends and their spouses to raft down the daily section of the Colorado. There was no whitewater carnage, but we had a good time!

Our buddies Kat, Jason, Tyler, and Sheena