I went on a little camping trip this summer. My writing felt stagnant and I wanted to see some stars so I decided to go to Utah.

I am a genius. Every major food group is represented.

The first place I went was Arches, but this isn’t it. I got there late at night and it was too hot to sleep so I packed up my tent and drove to Natural Bridges Monument.

They encourage you to climb down under the natural bridges. This was the point where I considered turning back, since the view seemed just fine from here and I couldn’t see any reasonable way to get from this spot to whatever was below the rocks.

I kept going and found these reassuring stairs. They appear to be held in place by tiny strands of twisted metal.

On the bright side, their shape is not unlike the curvature of my spine as a result of scoliosis, which I recently learned about via x-ray. I wasn’t aware of the similarity at the time.

As it turned out, the underside of the bridge looked exactly how I imagined it would. It provided a strip of shade though, which was a nice change of pace.

This map tells you where you are, which makes it hard to travel with. I asked the park ranger where to go to stargaze and he sent me to Cedar Breaks. He said the weather would be good. This did not turn out to be the case.

I tried to stop at this super cool-looking cafe but it was closed. By the time I got near Cedar Breaks thunderstorms were coming in so I kept driving and camped near Bryce National Park.

I was tired of my chocolate-peanut butter superfood, so I cooked a mediocre rice dish.

I set up my tent and then after dark I drove into the park for stargazing. It was partly cloudy, but I saw some pretty good stars. After that I went back to my tent and didn’t wake up until four in the morning after it had been raining for some time. I had forgotten to put a tarp over or under my tent so I packed up and drove all the way home. I give my self a B+ for the trip. Stargazing wasn’t great and my tent got all wet because I’m an idiot, but I created a superfood and saw some bridges. Maybe a B, since I killed a bunch of rabbits accidentally while driving on winding roads at four in the morning in the dark. I’m hoping to take a trip this fall if I can ever catch up on my work. This trip didn’t totally get me out of my writing funk, but it was fun to camp for the first time in a while.