May 2 2008

Got up and made two gigantic and beautitful veggie omelettes. We repacked gear and made our plans for the weekend. Joanne talked with her boyfriend Steve on the phone for a while. We've all been discussing relationships a lot lately. Yesterday we all got to share a little bit with eachother about our own experiences and outlooks and emotional pasts. Casey has a list of "feeling" words which he uses to help him communicate more clearly and honestly and avoid using judgemental language in his own relationship, which I find both mildly amusing and fascinating. He speaks very deliberately and mindfully about his emotions, and in general. Gazelle nicknamed him the Spiritual Businessman, which fits pretty well.
Around lunchtime we headed to meet Nico, Caitlyn's boyfriend, at the Coyote corner gift shop. From there we drove up the road into Joshua Tree National Park. The trees, which seem to average about 12-15 ft. in height, are extremely Seussian, with spiky tufts of yucca-like leaves sprouting off of this thick wiggly branches, which begin dividing into a crown after a good 8 feet or so of lollipop stick straight trunks. They also had flowers and green pod fruits.
Not that the trees weren't amazing and other worldly, but the more magnificent attraction for us and many others who visit the park, was the rock climbing. We pulled in next to an enormous rock formation that had endlessly fun ways to climb on, around, up & over it, as well as many boulders to climb under and between We put on climbing shoes and bouldered away to our hearts contents all afternoon. I loved freesoloing up as high as I dared and then finding ways to climb across and down another way, and chiney climbing up gaps between boulders. Caitlyn and Nico set up a top rope in one spot and after watching the others do it, i tried it too -- my first time outdoor rockclimbing with a rope. I climbed it really well, I was proud of myself for making it through a tricky lie-back without any trouble at all. It psuched me up to try freeclimbing in a few spots that I had passed up earlier in the day before my confidence was built up. I really enjoyed feeling like I was half-decent at freeclimbing.
We took a lot of great photos of eachother climbing and a few silly ones, and when we were done we piled back into Nico's truck and drove over to Idyllwyld. We stopped at the pizza place for dinner. The road to Idyllwyld was very mountainous and windy and curvy. It went past a wind farm and along the sides of mountains so that it felt like being in a low-flying plane to look out the window at the city lights below.. Closer to Idyllwyld the desrt gave way to pine forest, which smelled fantastic.
At the pizza place we bumped into Gazelle and Squatch, the filmmaker. Joanne and I ate leftover salad and rice & veggie concoction from last night. Squatch tried some and praised it very highly. he and Gazelle ended up camping with is at Idyllwlyd Park.