Intro
About 3 months ago, my roomate from college contacted some friends and me and inquired as to who'd be up for a trip to New Mexico for the 4th of July weekend. At the time, 7 people accepted the mission, but over the course of the next couple months, several things happened that made me wonder whether the trip would be doomed. Besides the huge fires that threated much of the area we were going to be visiting, a couple of the people who had accepted to go on the trip had to bow out for other reasons.

As the vacation approached, though, things fell into place and things went off without nary a hitch. It was 5 people, one desert, 2 caves, and lots of hiking and fun. On the next couple pages lays the story of the 5 day trip. If you click on highlighted words throughout, they'll take you to a page with a picture and commentary from the trip. Many of them are linked (all the ones that load without the page header) from Mousers site, as he was generous enough to let me link him when I found out a roll of my film didn't advance (read on to find out more about this).

The People Involved:
Mouser: my roommate for 2 years of undergrad and very good friend (also organized the trip). Even though we hadn't seen each other in years, we were still finishing sentences for one another and dropping inside jokes like nobody's business.
Nichol: another friend from my college years. She went to a different school, but I met her through a mutual friend and we ended up becoming good friends.
Lukas: a friend that Mouser met after college. I'd never met him before, but we hit it off well and talked movies and music for quite some time on the long drive and I felt instantly comfortable with him.
Allana: friend of Lukas whom I'd also never met, but was also a very excellent person.
Aaron: that's me, your humble narrator.