Worth A Thousand Words

If you’ve ever seen a Utah license plate, chances are you’ve seen a picture of our world renowned Delicate Arch.

This morning after camping out in sleeping bags under the clear desert sky which is southern Utah, my friends and I hit up Arches National Park so we could hike up to said arch.

Upon reaching the summit, we found ourselves in the mix of quite a few people wanting to get under the arch and snap off a picture. There is a sort of finesse required in getting this task accomplished.

We lingered as we watched some professional photographers get what they desired. The rest of us patiently waited after which we all considerately passed time until our turns to capture our pictures.

Since no one wanted to wait for you to take a picture with some of the group, switch off the camera, photograph another mix of the group, and so forth, groups made friends with someone in front or behind them and took each others’ pictures.

While my group of friends was in the arch, the couple behind us kept trying to take our picture. However, somewhere some parents were unaware of their rogue kid with a red baseball cap who kept dangerously running in and out of our picture.

The couple tried their best to snap a good picture yet I was growing ever frustrated at this menace who was rapidly killing my buzz from the hike. Neighboring onlookers were aggravated as well at the scenario.

After they had shot our picture and we had shot theirs, we were all standing around talking and the dumbest joke via pun I ever made came out.

E: Hey you guys, thanks so much for taking our pictures. We really appreciate it.
Couple: Hey no problem. Anytime.
E: No seriously, you were good trail buddies. Not like that kid who was our nemesis.
C: (Laughing) Yeah seriously, what was that?
E: I know. I’m serious. He was our nemesis. (Then it hit me like a brick.) OUR ARCH
NEMESIS.

Everyone in listening distance was standing around laughing. If I hadn’t gotten a good laugh out of it, I could have pushed that kid over the cliff.