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.