US SW Road Trip

I have always loved rock and stone and headed out around the end of  April 2011 for a grand (solo) road trip to the US south. My first destination was Arches National Park in SE Utah where I camped for three days. The weather was nice and sunny...warm days but really cold nights. @ an elevation of 8,000 feet the freezing and windy nights really caught me off guard! I bought a cheap tent in Moab from a crappy store. The first night in the Arches camp ground I forgot to tie the cord around the tent pole crossover. The wind was so strong that it was flattening the tent! After fixing/modifying/pegging and weighing down the tent I managed to brew up a pot of Tim Horton coffee with my new propane stove. Mind you, I had to do it on the tailgate of the truck with numerous pieces of windbreak/plywood etc.encircling the stove. I had put on about 5 layers of clothing and dragged out my new "girlfreind" as I jokingly called "her" to spend the night under the stars with. (Skywatcher 10" computer-controlled Dobsonian telescope. Complete with loads of eye-pieces, accessories and a portable power supply to run it. Too bad I forgot to bring any usable and current star-charts!) The scope and mount took up about one third of the area in the back of my canopy truck! I set it all up and tried it out for a while with little success. As my hands and nose got colder and colder the scope was getting pretty sand blasted. Not good for any expensive optical electronic device. I had to wrap her up in a tarp as best I could and shut her down for the night. Into the new tent I crawled. I layed there for about 45 minutes listening to the deafening roar of the tent flapping in the cold wind and tried some ear-plugs. No good. "Ok...guess I have to sleep in the truck tonight." Problem was I had brought sooooo much useless stuff! (Two folding chairs, Elliots' bicycle, etc.,etc.,etc.) After starting up the engine and sitting in the cab with the heater blasting for 15 minutes I reclined the front seat and eventually caught a few zzzzs! What a start to my trip heh!? I loved every moment of it. Even the "Iced (frozen) coffee" in the morning.