The weekend of 27 Jul 07, Tracy and I tried to climb Handies Peak in Colorado.  We drove all

the way there with the intent of starting around 3 am on Sunday.  We drove around Colorado

on Saturday, and then the weather moved in.  The entire area got completely smacked by a

storm, and the weather report wasn't very helpful on whether or not the storm would lift by the

time we needed to start the trail.  So we decided to cut our losses, and we drove back to

Arches in Moab in the middle of the night.  We camped out in the desert, and then hiked up to

Delicate Arch (Google Map) in the pre-dawn darkness.  We actually had to share the trail with

three other people who started at pretty much the exact same time as we did, but that was

fine.  We hiked up in the darkness, and it started getting light as we got close to the arch.  The

arch was pretty cool, and it was nice watching the sun rise over Colorado (where, of course,

there were no storm clouds...).  There were quite a few people coming up the trail after we

started back down, and most of them were Americans, but Tracy and I were the only

Americans up there at dawn...we're always amazed that Americans don't really seem to

appreciate everything our country has to offer.  The quietness of the desert at dawn was also

really cool.  It soon got REALLY hot, though, and we ended up just driving back home.