Caching In The Wild Wild West

Last September Mark and I took a camping trip out West. Anyone that knows me and hasn't talked to me in a long while will probably think.... camping? Yep! Mark has done a lot of camping in his time, so he has really turned me on to it. Now, don't get the idea that we were just pitching a tent in the woods somewhere and bathing in streams or anything. We do what my friend Adam calls 'glamping' (Glamour + Camping = glamping). We stay at KOA campgrounds, which are really awesome most of the time with modern bathrooms, showers, a general store - you get the picture. Somewhere I can plug in my hair dryer and say "Man, roughing it is really great!" We got ourselves a tent, sleeping bags, stove and all of the camping accessories one needs to brave the wilderness, and we head out on the road. We drove to Moab, UT for our first stop - Arches National Park. It's Mark's favorite park and now I know why. It is surreal and dramatic - like an alien landscape. That's cliche, I know, but it's true. We also visted Canyonlands while we were staying in Moab, where I realized that I am absolutely terrified of heights. I never noticed it before. But believe me, that's a place that will bring it out! I kept yelling at Mark to get away from the edge wherever we went - even though he was like 20 feet from it. After that, we headed to Bryce Canyon. Along the way we stopped at a lovely lookout in Dixie National Forest, and that is where Mark proposed! It was perfect - we had the spot to ourselves. It was so sweet - then I almost carried us both over the edge when I said "Yes!" and ran at him to hug him. We almost both went over the side. THAT is my new favorite place! :) We did make it to Bryce Canyon alive, and wow. What an awesome place! We stayed at the famous Ruby's campground there, and we loved it. We had a nice secluded spot under some pines. We intended to go to Zion after that, but we loved it at Bryce Canyon so much that we skipped Zion and stayed an extra day. We headed toward Monument Valley after that. It's on a Navajo reservation, and it was spectacular. We did not intent to stay there, just drive through, take a look, then head on toward our last stop, Mesa Verde in Colorado. However, our story takes a turn for the worse here. Stopped at a gas station, got gas, car didn't turn back on. To make a long story short, we were barely able to get a hotel room (had to beg) and we had to wait for a tow truck the following day. Then we had to be towed all the way to a dealership in Flagstaff, about 3.5 hours away. What a ride! We stayed the night there and they fixed the car, and we headed on home. That is a LONG way. We did get to stop at Meteor Crater in Arizona, though - that was pretty cool.
So, of course along the way we picked up a cache in every state, and I even got a couple of extra states - New Mexico and Texas, thanks to our detour!