Blog                           1-24-12                     Miles Gibson         

Well we came back to SOAR early in January and since then we’ve all been having a lot of fun together. We started our first expedition a few days after we arrived. We started the ex by landing in Las Vegas and then making our way to Red Rocks were we did some rock climbing. That was a blast to do It was one of the biggest climbs I’ve ever done and I’m told it was one of the hardest rated climb so I’m happy about that. I climbed two different routes two different times a piece.

Afterwards we went to the Grand Canyon Nat’l Park which I did earlier the month before with my last SOAR group, except it was the north rim. This time it was the south rim. We hiked 18 miles total over 4 days down and up.

We then went to the Petrified Forest Nat’l Park which was a site to behold. It was really dry and void of life but within the desert there were amazing works of nature. The Petrified Forest has its name due to the wood that has been turned into a mineral over years and years of it being mixed and compressed with ash, mud, and water. The wood had amazing feel and look to it, you could still see the rings on the wood that have been replaced beautiful rock.

Afterwards, we then headed to a KOA campground were we slept there for 2 nights. Most of that time was spent doing school, but we found time for fun on the play ground were we spun on the Roundy round and what not.

After that we went to another campground in outside of Phoenix, Arizona called lost Dutchman’s campground, which has a story of treasure and a curse behind it. We did more school there but due to good behavior we got a reward of cookies, and a fire, where we had our nightly meeting and had a good time.

We then made it back to North Carolina.