this is in no way a negative thing. yesterday pretty much went from bad to worse for braymee. lucky for us adventure flourishes no matter what. it was still a great day. despite a few small bumps in the road. 
we set out around 9am. off to find adventure. make new friends in escalante. see some natural beauty. we did all of those things. and then some. you see. we had our hearts set on this little hike i read about in my book called "100 hikes in utah". we did a little research. visited dixie at the escalante visitors center. she gave us a paper and told us how to get there. third cattle guard. we made it. strapped on our hydration packs. and began what could later be referred to as the march of death. 
oh the hike itself was beautiful. no problems there. we saw a snake. that made things real exciting for a bit. though she hasn't yet admitted it i'm pretty sure jaymee had to clean a brown streak out of her undies that night. for now we'll let her think that we're fooled. we hiked through a beautiful wash. slickrock walls surrounded us on every side. we loved it. little did we know we hiked two thirds of the hike "off trail". turns out that in a hike book when they say "follow the wash bed 2.0 miles" they don't mean to literally walk down the bed of the wash. there were other human footprints there. we weren't the only ones. but i still felt dooped.
then it began. it started small. small things can get big. real big. you see, i had a little case of the mencies. i was plainly convinced that the painful part was over. therefore not seeing a need to pack any type of pain relief for the 5 mile hike. i'll spare you the horrific details. suffice it to say that jaymee and i both thought that she may have to piggy back me out. by the time we reached the car i was running for my ibuprofen 800's like a toddler to his mother after a long day at the sitter. i think i may have even heard "chariots of fire" playing in my mind. but victory wasn't instant. that magic white pill needed some time to do it's thing. while that happened i laid in the passenger seat of howie writhing in pain. i wanted my mommy...or to die. thank goodness jaymee and i share a brain (and 7 years of friendship) she knew just what to do. leave me alone. she drove to the nearest gas station to change her shirt. buy some ice. get a cold drink. make some new friends. meanwhile i laid in the car. a bit thankful to be alone. so i could verbally express the depth of my pain. and anger at mother nature at that moment for making me a girl. by the time she returned to the car i was beginning to feel the first signs of relief. i think jaymee knew this when i turned and said "i haven't been in that much pain since the last time i was in that much pain..."
with my improving physical condition we made the executive decision to return to the national monument for some more sightseeing. this time by car instead of foot. we didn't want to push our luck. we drove the road that i pedaled last september in the southern utah bike ride. those hills looked bitchin'...and not in the good way. i'm proud of myself for pedaling up them. i'm pretty tough. on the other side of the monument we saw a sign to a road that said "hell's backbone". of course we took it. that was after jaymee tried to take a road meant for high clearance vehicles in howie. his meager 10 inches of clearance really didn't help when we were driving over rocks that were at least 13 inches high...but we made it out of there with our fuel tank still attached. that's all that matters.
turns out the hell's backbone road wasn't the long way back to town. it was the really really really long way back to town. BUT. it was also the really really really spectacularly beautiful way back to town. we most likely could have made the drive in half the time that it took us. we stopped every 50 yards to take a picture of the spectacular beautifulness. we were having fun. *suddenly i hear the chorus to "ain't nothin' gonna hold me down" by men at work*
we got back to town. made some tin foil dinners. yum. they were beyond tasty. i tried to have a beer. i was even too tired for that. now that's pretty tired. after dinner i went to bed. yeah. it was only 8pm and the sun was still shining bright. judge me. my body had a rough day.
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