The long awaited spring break started for me on Friday. I gladly switched off my phone alarm and went back to sleep with a smile. 🙂

However, a call at 9:10 shattered all my dreams. My friend, Raj, called me up and asked if I am not giving my Electrical Engineering Exam. With a panic, I gathered myself and rushed to the school in my pajamas. I reached the classroom by 9:30 AM and the exam was almost half way through. I had 30 minutes left to take a one hour exam.

I think I still did well in that exam. After the last class at 4 PM, I went to Raj’s room and spend some time just chilling and taking some time off from studies. 2 nights ago, it snowed so badly that there was no way I could drive back home and thus, had to stay on campus.

On Saturday morning, I left to the airport along with Raj, Sreyes and Praful in the morning. I had a whole day to spend at the airport and get bored. But, that didn’t happen. All hail free Wi-Fi and Pandora. While all of my friends were off to Las Vegas, I was to the amazing Oklahoma City. I was also going to spend 4 days in a Christian camp. What better to do during Spring break, right? Yeah, I was pretty bummed as well.

I reached my cousin’s home by 10 PM and slept for some time, watched movies and had fun, a lot of fun. Next day, I met all my friends at church and also went for a home game against the Utah Jazz team.

On Monday, I played some pool with my cousin and for the first time, he beat me twice, in a row. Well, things happen. 🙁 After that, we spent some time at Walmart finding some cables to watch movies. It was a time well spent because I finally found some time to watch some Hindi movies.

The next few days, I just relaxed and rested at the home getting enough sleep, for a change. I also got to spend some time with my great friends and cousins at the mall and other places.

On Thursday afternoon, we left for the camps at Falls Creek, Oklahoma. It was said to be the biggest campsite and it was pretty amazing. They had a lake at the camp site! The first day was pretty relaxing and we had a session as well along with some good dinner. The only bad thing was no cell phone reception!! 4 days without the phone and internet was not good especially when you open up the inboxes to 40 new mail messages!

Friday and Saturday had four sessions and all were very informative and beneficial to my life. On Sunday, we had a wrap up session and went back home. I had my flight at 6 PM and reached home at 4 PM. So, I had to rush through my packing and reach airport at the right time. I didn’t felt like coming back at all. One was home sickness and the other was AE 304- Aircraft Structures 1 homework. I slept all the way to the house: a total of 4 hours in the plane and shuttle.

Anyways, life goes on and another late night is waiting for me. It is still fun though, each problem is very interesting and doing homework turns out to be a little bit fun, actually.

In my next post, I will try to cover my next semester schedule and things I would possible do in the summer and try to convince you why I am stoked.

When we last left our heroine, she was making her way from Grandma’s house to meet up with her friends in Vegas. We now return for part two!

Me and Josh in front of Vegas Sign

I didn’t know if I was going to like Vegas. It’s Sin City, and I kind of saw it as this trashy place where people lose all of their money: Lost Wages, if you will. Now part of that assessment is true, but for the most part I really enjoyed Vegas. I think what I liked the most was the freedom of it. Nobody cared what you did. It was sort of a general “F-it, it’s Vegas” anything goes attitude. The chill atmosphere was a complete departure from the uptight world I normally resided in, so I excitedly joined the party (although, I did so conservatively). It was basically a giant theme park for grownups.

Cigarette Vending Machine

I don’t know if there is a more epic place to spend St. Patrick’s Day than Las Vegas, NV. The entire city is one huge party, with Irish Music blasting from restaurants all down the strip, tons of bad drunken attempts at Irish accents, and lots and lots of green. My friends invited one of the German exchange students to come with us and forgot to tell him about St. Patrick’s Day.

“Dude where’s your green shirt?”

“What green shirt? I don’t have a green shirt.”

“It’s St. Patrick’s Day! Why don’t you bring anything green?”

“What is St. Patrick’s Day?” asked the German.

It never occurred to us that he wouldn’t know about St. Patrick’s day, but when you think about it, it’s an Irish American holiday, so why would he? After a swarm of drunken people engaged in a massive pinching attack, our German friend purchased a green necklace and Dr. Seuss style hat.

Our German friend Markus learns about the Irish American holiday of St. Patrick's Day

Markus, Me and Josh at the America Restaurant in the New York New York Casino

My St. Patrick’s Day shirt was a green shirt with shamrocks and white and pink lettering that read “Blondes have all the luck.” I figured it was perfect for Vegas. “We’ll have to see if it’s a sincere or sarcastic statement during this trip,” I told my friend as they read my shirt.

We stayed at the Tropicana where we got a really good deal because my boyfriend’s aunt works there. My share of the room was only $90 total for three nights during spring break when the rates are really high, which was an Awesome Deal!

This was our hotel on the strip

For meals, we usually looked for awesome deals. On the first night we got crab, steak, or crab and steak specials for $14.99 at the America Restaurant in the New York, New York Casino. Our German friend asked “Yes, could you please give me crabs?” and after a massive fit of giggles, we explained what he had said to him.

The second day we got all you can eat all day buffet tickets in the Excalibur Casino for $29.99, and the third day we got steak and lobster tail specials on Fremont street for $11.99. I consumed so much food during the trip that the after effects are probably worse than the holidays, but it was so worth it!!!

Buffets are such an awesome concept, aren’t they? You can get as much as you want of whatever you want. And I did!

Kerianne's buffet fun!!! See if you can spot all of these foods in the image above: Pizza, Rotisserie Chicken, Barbecue Beans, Macaroni and Cheese, Mashed Potatoes, Hush puppies, Lemon, Catfish, Cranberry Sauce, Crab Wonton, Black-eyed peas, Steak Fries...I think that's all of them...

What would a trip to Vegas be without gambling? At first I thought I wouldn’t gamble, because I’m a penny pinching college student, and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing money. Then I decided that it was worth the life experience and free drinks, and determined that $50 would be my limit for a loss. It was an entertainment expense.

I couldn’t bring myself to seriously gamble in the slot machines because every time I watched a person sitting in their chair pushing a button repeatedly on the machine in front of them, it reminded me of B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning experiments where he trained his pigeons to peck metal disks in their cages for little food pellets.

I decided that if I were to gamble, it would have to in something that involves a little strategy and thought processes, so I chose blackjack.

My boyfriend and I practiced a little blackjack before the trip so I knew all the rules and basic strategy. I sat down at the first table, a $5 minimum table, exchanged$ 40 for some chips, and started to play. At this point my shirt was proving to be pretty correct, when I walked away a hour and a half later with a $75 profit.

Later that afternoon all of the tables on the strip were pretty much at $10-100 minimums, so we went off the strip to the Silverton Casino and found another table. It was pretty awesome because we filled the table so we knew everyone and we could cheer for each other. I was up about $50 when most of my friends were down. So we kept playing. One of my friends was on their last chip twice before he made a huge comeback. We stopped when we were all in the black again. I finished $15 up bringing my running total to $90. We used our winnings to justify ordering room service for breakfast the next day.

Room Service Breakfast

Me eating room service breakfast

I spent hours during the week playing blackjack. At the end of the trip, I was $30 up and decided that gambling was a ton of fun if you weren’t stupid about it. For me, it meant hours upon hours of entertainment, a payoff in the end, and tons of free drinks at the tables. When drinks are going for about $10 each, free drinks are awesome!

The only drinks I actually bought in Vegas were two giant daiquiris from Fat Tuesday, which ran me about $20.

Source of awesome, huge, cheap, strawberry daiquiris

An appropriately blurry picture of our group and our daiquiris

When you are drinking a decent amount, you have to drink a ton of water to keep from getting dehydrated and to avoid the infamous hangover. Most places are required by law to give you a free cup of water if you ask for it, and when I didn’t have a bottle of water, I occasionally did ask for cups of water. The most memorable account of this was when we went to McDonalds on the strip and I asked for a McCup of water. The lady behind the counter was not at all impressed, but I didn’t take it personally because I realized that I probably wasn’t the only slightly inebriated person to make a smart comment that evening.

Look, water has it's own dispenser and not just one of those tab thingys under the lemonade.

How McDonald's on the strip looks to most of it's patrons....

The giant theme park aspect of Vegas is exceptionally evident in its themed casinos in varying levels of cheesiness. Don’t get me wrong, many of the casinos are very elegant inside, but they are not without their cheesy themes.

New York New York Casino

The last night that we were there we traveled down to Fremont Street, also sometimes called Old Vegas. Now this we expected to be exceptionally cheesy, but it was actually a ton of fun! Freemont Street didn’t share the same kind of stuck up feeling that some of the casinos on the strip had in the evenings. It was pretty happening on a Friday night, with live music in the streets, and most of the people down there were pretty real people. $5 tables were plentiful and so were dinner specials. We had a blast.

Fremont Street

One of the really exciting things for me about Fremont Street was that some of the casinos still had the old coin operated slot machines. I had to throw five dollars in one and play till it was gone, not because I had hopes of winning the jackpot, but because I considered it an investment in keeping the novelty of those machines around for years to come. I did at one point cash out just so I could hear and see all the nickels dropping out into the tray, but I ended up putting them all back in the machine.

Nickel collector on old slot machine

Me at real coin machine

All in all it was an awesome Spring Break! It was fun and relaxing and rejuvenating to a certain extent. It was more fun than I’d had in a long time. Now back to school…

One of the wonderful traditions of the American education system is the much appreciated and anticipated Spring Break. Once a year, students flock from all over the country to exciting destinations to escape the stress and routine of their classes.

My freshman year I went home for spring break, as many freshmen do in their first year away from home. Once you get older though, going home isn’t as exciting as it used to be. Now, everyone back home has difference spring breaks or has to work, which primarily results in me twittling my thumbs on the couch… My sophomore year I didn’t have a spring break because I was on a co-op in California, rather than at school for a semester.

This year I decided to make my Spring Break count. A group of my senior friends also decided to make this Spring Break count, since it would probably be their last.

My Spring Break could really be divided into two distinctive parts. The first part was more of a relaxing journey with some form of productivity in mind. The second part was meeting those senior friends in Vegas where I planned to be exceptionally unproductive.

This is the story of the first part of spring break. I started Spring Break officially on Friday when I stopped doing academic work and instead went shopping (I hadn’t seen the mall for more than a month), and enjoyed a relaxing date with my boyfriend.

My journey started on Saturday when I jumped in my car and headed for Southern California, but not the beach side of Southern California that you’d expect. My destination was the middle of the Mojave Desert with three separate purposes in mind: one, to visit my friends from my Co-op at NASA Dryden, two, to shop for an apartment for my next co-op term, and three, to go shopping.

While in California I stayed with one of my close friends and we went out for dinner, drinks, and live music Saturday night. I went clothes shopping Sunday and apartment shopping Monday, during which I successfully purchased a new outfit for a night out, and compiled enough information on the AV apartment market through numerous visits to make a PowerPoint presentation titled “Kerianne’s Apartment Information Reconnaissance Mission,” which I sent to my parents and prospective roommate.

I left Tuesday morning, making my trip just under the three day mark, a rule which my family tends to stick to when visiting and staying with other people. My maternal grandmother always used to say, “Fish and houseguests start to stink after three days.”

From California, I made my way to Vegas to visit my grandmother. We combed over old pictures while she reminisced and told me how wonderful I was (which is something that grandmothers are really good at, and one reason people will go back and visit them). I was there from noon Tuesday to four Wednesday, enough to be filled with lots of good food! I also set up a video chat with my parents, which was the first time my grandmother had ever done a video chat. “What will they think of next?” she remarked afterwards.

Me, Gmom and Jim at a buffet for dinner.

Tune in tomorrow for the next, and more exciting part of Kerianne’s Spring Break: VEGAS!!!

Has anyone finished something big and just felt that sigh of relief shower over them?  If so, add a week of no school to that wonderful feeling!  Finally, after weeks of monotonous class and studying, the students of ERAU got their break.  I chose to go back to Southern California with my friends Adam and Adam.  The week was highly anticipated and none of us could wait to get on the road.

Our first stop for break was Mammoth Mountain for a weekend of snowboarding.  The drive was very daunting from Prescott to the mountain.  The drive took about 10 hours plus stopping time for gas and food.  Once we met up with my family in a small town right before the mountain, we traveled to the cabin and passed out for the night.

After a morning that came way too soon, we finally got up and ready to go.  There had been a storm during the night (and as we were arriving) and the mountain was coated with fresh layers of powder.  My friends and I decided to head straight to the top. 

While we were at the top, we saw and interesting sign.  The resort actually caused avalanches during the night with explosives so that people would not start them while riding the day after a fresh coat of powder had befallen the slopes.

After a day of crashes and great fun, we hauled ourselves back to the cabin, sore and ready for a good shower.  What we found instead was that the hot tub was open and we immediately chose to hit up that option.  While in the hot tub, we made an even better discovery: a sauna!  After sitting in the hot tub for a while, we turned up the sauna and relaxed as we dried off.

The next morning proved to be just as difficult to wake up.  After much prodding and constant annoyance, we gathered ourselves and got ready for another day of shredding.  The mountain was just as beautiful as it had been the day before, but this time, we decided to try out the slopes on the back side.  Having been to the mountain countless times since I was young and having never gone on the back side, this was an exciting new experience for us all!  The snow was still fresh on the backside, and the trails were amazing.  The tough part, however, was that there was only one way back to the front of the mountain and we needed to go to the complete other side for lunch in one hour’s time.  After many fast runs and slow chairlifts, we finally made it back in time for lunch.

The rest of the day proved to be very difficult, because one of the Adams got lost on the mountain by taking one wrong trail, believing that the other Adam and I had gone that way.  Instead of waiting around for a while to let him catch up, we went back up to the top of the mountain and decided to try a trail that was extremely nerve racking.  This trail went along the ridge of the mountain, stretching only 3 meters wide at some points and dropping off vertically into rocky chutes.

Finally, we made it to the end of the ridge and it was time to shoot down and dodge various trees and obstacles until we reached the main runs.  On our way down, Adam and I split up because it proved too difficult to stay together in the trees.  He made it down no problem.  I, however, got stuck in the heavy powder amongst the trees and had to hike over a quarter of a mile in all my snowboarding gear and with my board to reach the slopes once more.  After getting down to the bottom of the mountain, Adam and I finally realized that we did not know where our other Adam had gone.  After freaking out and assuming the worst for about 15 minutes, we saw him walking towards the car.  Needless to say, I was exhausted that night.

Finally, our last day had come upon us.  We woke up and hit the mountain for the third day.  We decided to explore some of the runs that we hadn’t yet been on around the mountain, since we were all getting pretty sore by that point.  During out adventure, we came across something none of us had ever expected to see: two girls riding on the mountain in bikinis! The three of us could not believe our eyes.  Never in our talk about the moutain did any of us even consider that there would be girls there wearing beach outfits!  After seeing that, the rest of the day seemed so obsolete that we couldn’t help but hope to see them again.

Finally, the weekend had come to an end and we had to make the drive to Huntington Beach.  Thankfully, my dad had stayed and was the one driving us home.  My friends and I just slept for the drive.  So ends part one of my spring break adventure.  I’ll be back with more adventures soon!

Our week-long break is wrapping up and, surprisingly, I’ve accomplished some things. Unfortunately, not much of what I have gotten done is school related. Saturday, my friend, Brody, and I drove to San Diego in my car. We left at 5am and made fairly good time, arriving around 11:30 with some traffic around Riverside. The rest of the day was spent hanging out with friends and accomplishing absolutely nothing. Sunday we had a brunch for my dad’s birthday, which included an amazing black forest cake and later that day I met a couple of people at Starbucks.

Monday morning is when the pace started picking up. It started with me getting up very early (7:30am) to take my dad to drop his z3 off for repair. Then we took my macbook to the Apple store next so it could get repaired; I just got it back and they ended up replacing the display and magsafe board (battery charging thing). It all works great and I had dented the display before so I’m not complaining that I have a new one 🙂  After dropping off my computer, I went to visit General Atomics. I have a friend who works there and he wanted to give me a tour/have me meet his bosses since I applied for an internship there. It was really cool because although cubicles are always nice, I got to see the predator drones being built one building over. They have several versions and the small one is smaller than I expected. The biggest predator, Reaper, is used in the Air Force, NASA, and several other nations. The things run off of a modified snowmobile engine and you can tell that there’s a lot of engineering in each one, including the material used for the landing gear so it can flex without breaking.

Tuesday, I visited a few teachers and my old work group at Northrop Grumman. It was good to see some of them that I hadn’t seen in years. Later in the day, I decided to go for a bike ride. I ended up at the beach and decided to go swimming. The water was pretty cold but still not as cold as it’s been in Prescott. Luckily it was sunny, but I wasn’t completely dry until I was almost home, so it was a little chilly for the ride back. Besides that and visiting some other people, my week has been relaxed.

Last Saturday night, the Hawaiin Club at ERAU put on their Fourteenth Annual Hawai’i Club Luau.  They turned the whole Activity Center into a flowery, tropical party!  The theme of the luau was “Na Mele Aloha”, which translated from Hawaiian means, “The Songs of Aloha.”  They had awesome dances as well as fabulous food and souveniers even imported from Hawaii!  Here’s my Hawaiian adventure:

I stood in line with one of my friends for about ten minutes behind fellow students and in front of two elderly ladies who come every year for the food and the dances, from what I could tell from the broken pieces of conversation I overheard.  We paid the entry fee, got a smiley face drawn on our hands, then received a lei from the people who were welcoming guests in their traditional outfits.  There were tables EVERYWHERE, with a stage and a HUGE mural of the Hawaiin sunset behind it.  Luckily, we got front row seats!

I couldn’t get the whole stage properly, but here’s a picture of the mural behind the stage that the members of the club danced on.

Of course, immediately I had to go see what kind of stuff they imported from the islands just for this event.  Here are the tables!

They had everything from kitchen mitts and potholders to leis to jewelry to Tshirts and shorts.  It was so colorful!

Also imported was the food that they served.  It was SO delicious!  My teammate, Sarah Galeai, (who is from Somoa), is a member of the club, and she helped to put it on, make food, and dance in the dances.  She explained to me how some of the parents of the members actually flew to Prescott from Hawaii to help make the food!  I could DEFINITELY tell it was authentic, it was just so good.  Here’s what was on the menu:

I recognized most of the foods, or some words in the foods anyway, but I was able to try everything and I was thoroughly amazed!  It was SOO good!

After the food was served, the Hawaiin Club performed a series of traditional dances, each of which the announcer said were the equivalent of running two miles at a 5-minute mile pace.  I could totally see that.  It looked really graceful, how they were doing it, but I don’t think I could keep moving my hips for so long and still have the energy to do another dance!  Haha.  Here’s another pic:

Overall, it was a really cultural experience for me and I was so glad I was able to experience another way of life!  Now, if I could only convince my parents to let me go to Hawaii for spring break… if not, I’ll listen to my Lilo and Stitch soundtrack and call it good.

“Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.”

-Jawaharlal Nehru

The snow was stinging the exposed portions of my face as it blew sideways at me when I left my final class of the day today. Just a few more yards, just a few to go.I could see my car now. It was going to be my refuge, my escape from the winter storm between me and a cup of hot tea in front of the fireplace of my cozy apartment

Snow outside the King Engineering building this morning

In a few minutes I’ll be out of this wind and comfortable and cozy and content, I thought to myself. I pressed the button on my keychain to unlock my car doors and nothing happened. Huh, the battery in my keychain must be out. Wouldn’t be the first time, this is my spare key chain.

Unphased, I opened my car with my key, threw all of my stuff into the back seat, and jumped into my car before slamming the door. The wind and snow free car was a welcome relief. I shivered as I brushed the snow off of my jacket and stuck my key into the ignition. I turned the key.

Nothing.

I started to feel a surge of panic. I turned the key again.

Nothing.

S–t! Now what? I thought in mild despair.

I saw a young man approaching the car next to mine and I jumped out of my car.

“Do you know how to jump start a battery?” I asked franticly.

“Yeah, sure!” he said. “I don’t have any cables, though. Do you?”

“I don’t know, let me look in my trunk. Wait! I can’t open my trunk, my battery is dead!”

“Use your key,” he said in a friendly tone.

“Oh…yeah.”

I opened my trunk, pulled up the carpet and plywood covering my spare, and searched every square inch. No cables.

“I don’t have cables either, sorry. Thanks for trying to help me though!” I said in the cheeriest tone I could muster in my circumstances.

I climbed back in my car again to escape the brutal weather, and pulled out my phone to text my boyfriend.

My battery on my car is definitely dead. I’m calling AAA.

I remembered my dad had signed me up for AAA this Christmas, just before I texted the last line. Pulling out my AAA card, I quickly located the phone number on the back and dialed. It connected and I quickly gave the friendly lady on the other end all of my information.

“And you’re location?”

“Prescott, Arizona,” I responded.

“Oh, well you called the number for Southern California, let me redirect you.”

I gave the Arizona lady all of my information again and she promised me help within an hour.

I didn’t want to go out in the storm again and I only had a five minute warning phone call to get back to my car, so I just stayed in my car and pulled out my Aircraft Structures II homework. Maybe the storm will get better before the guy gets here. No such luck, the storm continued to worsten.

45 minutes later when I got my call and directed the AAA dispatch to my car on campus, the storm looked as close to a blizzard as I’d ever seen (of course I’ve only ever lived in Arizona, Texas, and Southern California, so that really isn’t saying much in the grand scheme of things).

“Whoa, how old is this battery?” he asked as he began his initial inspection.

“I don’t know.”

“It looks old,” he said. “It’s all corroded, let me test it and we’ll see if it’s completely dead or if it just needs a charge.”

He hooked up this meter thingy to the metal thingys on top and took some kind of reading.

“Well, it looks like you need a new battery.”

“Can you start it up so I can get somewhere, or is it completely dead?” I asked.

“I can start it up, but you can’t turn the car off again, or it might not turn back on.”

“Do you sell batteries?”

“Yes but I already sold yours today, plus my batteries will be a lot more expensive than what you could get at the store.”

We got my car running, I signed some paperwork, and then I climbed back in my car. As I was waiting for my back window to defrost, my boyfriend texted me back.

I’m so sorry, do you need me to pick you up?

I called him and updated him. We decided that I was going to pick him up and we were going to go to AutoZone to get a new battery. The snow was lashing around my windshield as I drove through the fog that was actually snow on my mission to get a new battery. Then finally we made it to AutoZone.

I gave the man the make, model, and year of my car. They had my battery and it was in stock. YAY!!!!!

I also was very fortunate that my boyfriend knew what to do as he borrowed an unscrewer tool thingy from AutoZone that made this clicking noise when he pulled it backward and proceeded to take my old battery out for the $5 battery fee thingy, and put the new battery in. $95 later, all was fixed.

I couldn’t help but laugh a little the entire time. Murphy’s Law was in action. Not only did my battery die, but it died during the middle of a winter storm. Not too much harm was done though. All of my classes were over for the day, so I wasn’t going to miss anything, I learned about how to change car batteries and what to do when your battery was dead, and I got it all fixed in a couple hours. I emerged from my challenge ready to meet a new one, which I did – finishing my Aircraft Structures II homework…

One of the best things about living in Prescott is that compared to Pinetop, where I grew up, there are SOO many more shopping options!  Not that I go shopping all that often (I’m a college kid, remember?), but it’s still nice to have options.  For example: in Pinetop, the only place that anybody went for anything was our Supercenter Wal-Mart.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Walmart, but it’s kinda sad when it’s the hot spot for dates.  Here, there’s a mall (gasp), Target (yes!) and, my new favorite local store, Scrap-book-ish!  <3

Scrap-book-ish is a little store on Willow Creek Road that has everything you need to put together a creative journal called a scrapbook.  At home, scrapbooking was one of my favorite hobbies.  My mom, sister and I would gather around the table with pictures and colored papers and stickers and just create!  It’s one of my favorite memories that I have with my mom and sister.  When I went to college, I didn’t want to clutter up my already small room with paper and scissors and hole punches, so I left it all behind.  However, I got back into it just a few days ago because next Tuesday in my speech class we’re giving a demonstrative speech, and I figured that I would show how to make a scrapbook page!  I went to the Scrap-book-ish store hoping to find supplies, and find supplies I did!  (also, it was 75% off day, so that didn’t hurt either!)  My hobby has been resurrected once more!

Here are some pages I’ve made since then:

This is a page of Jessica Watts, Frosty and I on our first snow day of the year.

This one is of Cami Williams and I, while we were bored at a Diamondbacks game last year.  (The background on that one is that since our softball team won state, we were asked to go and stand on the field with all the other 1A, 2A, 4A and 5A winners while the D-Backs were warming up.  It was a BLAST!  And we got to be on the big TV in the corner that everyone tries to get on when you’re there!)  Good times!

This last one is of my suite and I when we were ice skating, which I wrote a blog about, so go check it out!

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”

 – Margaret Thatcher

Things have been very slow, yet fast-paced recently. What I mean by that is a lot is going on, however, not much to mention. Probably the most interesting thing since my last post was a hike my friend, Brody, and I went on two weeks ago. We left the school at 11:00 am for Granite Mountain, a 10 minute drive. Once we got there, it was about a mile or so hike from the parking lot to the base of the mountain. What we didn’t realize was that we went over a ridge that would confuse us a lot on our way back. We started out strong, hiking up at a quick pace since there was no brush obstructing our path.

Granite Mountain is about 2500 feet vertical and depending on how you go, the horizontal distance can range from a mile to a mile and a half. There is also a trail on the backside.

Brody and I wanted to get up and down the mountain as quickly as possible, so we went up the side that’s most vertical. We decided that it would be easiest to get to the top if we followed streams up. Now, at the time, I didn’t even give thought to the fact that I couldn’t see any snow and yet, there were flowing streams on the mountain. The school is almost directly south of Granite Mountain, and when it snows or rains, the wind is generally going south. We got to a point where we had to cross between toes on the mountain when we were about half way up. We rounded a corner – until that point, we had seen only two four foot patches of snow – and suddenly we were staring at two feet of snow solid along the mountain. We figured it wasn’t too bad further along so we crawled across the snow (so we wouldn’t sink) and crossed the stream to the other toe. We made much less progress now that we were hiking in snow, but continued on. We got to what we thought was going to be the top and realized we had reached one of three summits. Unfortunately, ours was about 500 ft short of the others and require hiking down quite a ways before being able to reach the others.

It was four o’clock at this point and I told Brody that we really needed to go to make it down before dark (I’d been bugging him for a while and he insisted that we had kept going). To make matters worse, it began to snow and then we were in a blizzard. We began our descent, through the snow, and I realized that we were taking a completely different path down than we had up. Due to our lack of time, we had to do this to make sure we were off the mountain in time. Our largest problem was that since Brody and I had not seen the snow from the school’s vantage point, we only had light gloves and jackets. My hands and feet quickly became cold as we walked down along a stream. The temperature had dropped significantly both because we were so high up and since the sun was slowly going down. There’s not too much more to say about the walk through the bushes…ah, actually, almost the whole way up and the entire way down was through very dense brush to make our trek harder.

We finally reached the base of the mountain just as the daylight faded and that’s when we saw the ridge I mentioned earlier. We were both very confused since we didn’t remember it. Hiking toward it, we jumped on a trail that we thought would take us to the car. It was pitch dark at this point and after hiking on the trail for a while, I told Brody we should just turn off the trail and go over the ridge to try to find the car. It turns out this was a good idea since that trail just went along the base of the mountain forever (or a really long time). Once we got to the top of the ridge we saw the main road and we were home free. Walking through very dense mud, each of our shoes accumulated 5-6 pounds as we continued. After crossing through two barbed wire fences (not illegal at all) we finally reached the road.

Now it was almost 7:30 pm and pouring. Brody had a heavier jacket so he gave me a poncho he had in his bag. We walked across the street to figure out where we were and called my roommate, Trevor, to pick us up. After standing there for fifteen minutes, we figured out he had already passed us and so we made our way toward the parking lot. It turns out that the trail we hiked on the ridge made us over-shoot the car. We were almost at the lot by the time Trevor came back, but he took us the rest of the way.

Brody and I finally made it back to the school around 8 or 8:30…it’s all a blur now. We were both fine except some scratches and I had very mild frostbite on my fingers that’s almost completely healed by now since it wasn’t much below freezing (30 F) on the mountain. The lesson in that story was to either wait until the snow is completely gone or take the trail up the back side instead next time. Here are some photos/video of the mountain from our trip:

Video 1: Climbing Up the Mountain Video 2: Snowing at the top

The view from the side of Granite Mountain

While most couples would enjoy a nice dinner and possibly a movie on Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend and I decided to go for a hike. A few of my friends thought the idea was kind of weird, but when you think about it, engineering students like me and my boyfriend are hardly typical.

Last weekend provided the first real opportunity to go hiking. I’ve been kept from hiking every other weekend this semester by inclement weather or newspaper production (as a section editor on the paper, I basically devote every other weekend to designing layout for our bimonthly paper).

Although I did have production on that weekend, we finished just after noon on Sunday and by 2:00 Sunday afternoon my boyfriend and I were standing at the beginning of the Metate Trailhead that leads up Granite Mountain.

Base of the trail

Granite Mountain is a majestic granite formation that is visible from most of campus, and the site of several close, beautiful hiking trails.

We only had about four hours until the parking lot would be closed at 6:00pm, so we set out to travel as far as we could up the mountain before turning back in two hours.

The weather was perfect. The sky was nearly cloudless, the breeze light, and the temperature a mild 50 degrees. We couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Granite mountain can be seen through the trees

The melting snow from this winter's storms created beautiful trickling streams around the mountain

The landscape was absolutely beautiful. Tall evergreens and smaller, bald deciduous trees lined both sides of the path. We marched along at a moderate pace, discussing our exciting hopes and plans for the future and exchanging childhood anecdotes.

View during the hike

We weren’t the only ones who had decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather on Valentine’s Day. Many other couples greeted us, smiling as we passed them.

One of the great things about hiking is that it is nearly impossible to be in a foul mood when you’re far from the stresses of real world life and surrounded by the beauty of nature and good company. Not one of the people that we passed was anything but pleasant, and it just added to the positivity of the trip.

When you are as busy and stressed as an engineering student in their junior or senior year of study, getting away from it all for a few hours on a beautiful hiking trail is nothing but a blessing. The Prescott campus is surrounded by beautiful hiking and climbing spots.

We didn’t quite make it all the way up the mountain, but we plan to return the next chance we have when the weather is beautiful and our weekend isn’t eaten up by production. As we got back into the car we turned to look back at the mountain through the trees and declared, “We’ll be back mountain! You may have conquered us today, but we’ll be back, and next time we’ll make it all the way to the top!”

The view of Granite Mountain as we reached our car

Don’t worry, we are not that crazy…it’s just like I said in the beginning, we’re engineers and therefore, a little quirky.