An Indian Palace, Colors, Purple Snot, and Traffic

The Color festival at the Indian Temple in Salem, Utah. Amazing. Pretty much, there were just thousands of people, and lots and lots of colored chalk being thrown around all over the place. The holiday is to celebrate the coming of spring and the return of colors (because winter is made of GRAY).

We had planned to leave at 4. The official color throw was supposed to occur at 5:40. Plenty of time, right? No. We did not anticipate the THOUSANDS of people that would be trying to get to the tiny town of Salem at the exact time that we were. Traffic was bad. And it took forever to get there. By the time we did, they were out of chalk to sell. So, we didn't get our own colors to throw at people. But, we did make it in time for the countdown and mass chaos. Once everyone started to throw their chalk powder all around, the sky was COMPLETELY FILLED with chalk dust, and there was no way to see or breathe. The air was suddenly entirely opaque, and a breath immediately filled one's lungs with chalk powder. That was not a pleasant feeling or taste. The after affects of inhaling all the chalk included colored snot for like a week. Mine was purple. It was oddly disconcerting to blow my nose and see a whole bunch of purple stuff in the tissue. So weird.

So we got covered in chalk, and once the sky cleared, we began our search for Paul, who had the camera. I forgot to mention that I drove up with Dani, Lorina, Meghan, and Jon. They are great. Anyway, after like twenty minutes of trying to get to the Northwest corner, which was not the same northwest corner that Paul was talking about, we found Rachelle, who led us to other friends and outside of the crowd that was very loud. Communication with Paul finally occurred and we met up, snapped some pictures, and promptly made our way to the mosh pits by the stage. It was totally crowd surfing time. On the way down the hill, we noticed that several people had climbed onto the roofs of some awnings. There were official looking people trying to make them get down. And then Meghan said, "Oh my gosh! That's Rachelle!!" "What???" came my reply, "No, it's not... holy cow! It is!!!!" She was on the roof, running around like a mad woman! It was hilarious!

Down in the crowd both Meghan and Lorina crowd surfed, and I was very proud. Nobody could ever convince me to participate, however. That is just simply a bad idea. :) Below is a picture of Meghan, above the crowds...
All in all, it was a blast. A super huge party with lots of colors, and I love colors. Is that a good enough explanation, Moe?