Morning Glory Natural Bridge

Yesterday, I was tagged by Bex over at Adventures of the Grigg Boys. My mission was to go to my picture folder and pick the sixth picture from the sixth folder. In doing so, I found this photo from our camping trip in April:


This is the south-ish side of Morning Glory Natural Bridge near Moab, Utah, looking up from underneath. The full span of this arch is 243 feet, so that gives you an idea of why my camera could only grab part of it as I stood below.

And the other side:
One of these days, I'm gonna get me a fish-eye lens so I can take full length pictures of arches from directly underneath.

I'm supposed to tag six people to do this meme, but as usual, I'm a rebel. If you want to be tagged, go for it. Please leave me a comment if you decide to do it so I can be sure to stop by your place and take a peek.

Mission accomplished!

Where I Went On Memorial Day

We needed some landscaping rocks (I love being able to relocate pieces of our beautiful mountains to be displayed in our yard!), so I got a permit from the BLM to go gather rocks from West Mountain near us. We spent a few hours on Memorial Day loading up the trailer and truck with views like this around us:




Beautiful day, beautiful views, beautiful weather... what more could you ask for?

Sunrise

People ask me why it is that I live in Utah. Well, there are a lot of reasons-- most of them having to do with family-- but this definitely counts for a LOT of the why I stick around this state:



Sunrise, just outside where I work (greenhouse in the foreground). Gorgeous!

No, I Have Not Dropped Off The Face Of The Earth

I just went AWOL for awhile. :)

Thursday through Sunday, I went here:


And here:


And here:


And here:


And camped with this in my backyard:


I love Arches National Park!

Beautiful Sunday

Ron, Violet and I decided to go letterboxing** today for the first time. We first went up Rock Canyon in Provo. This is the trail up the canyon-- the colors were incredible! (Violet loved that the mountains were all "dotted".) The letterbox was about an hour hike up into the canyon, in an old mine.

Then we drove up Provo Canyon, and stopped briefly at Bridal Veil Falls. Beautiful! I hope they don't rebuild the tram lines. I never did like them in the way of the view. We had stopped at a gorgeous park just before the falls to find our second letterbox. We have plans to go back sometime to enjoy a picnic there.

We continued on to Midway to find the third letterbox. It was on the Provo River, in a secluded little area off a footpath that fishermen like to use. It was very peaceful just sitting there on a big rock, listening to the water flow past.

All in all, a very fine afternoon!


**For more information about letterboxing, please visit www.letterboxing.org.

Rain

I love the smell after a rainstorm. I love the fresh, clean fragrance of trees and flowers; the sweetness of the air; how crisp everything looks all washed off. I love sitting out in thunderstorms, watching the lightning dance frantically in the skies above me. I love the wind whipping droplets into my face, hair, hands...

Ron and I went walking/jogging this morning at 5:15am (please don't ask me what I'm doing up at that ungodly hour... I can scarcely believe it myself), after it had been raining for most of the night. It was still even sprinkling a bit here and there...

It was a small piece of heaven on earth.

Battle Creek Falls

Ron took me on a last-minute date (what? we're both getting home a little early today?) up to Battle Creek Falls tonight. Nice, easy hike, with a fun payoff at the end. It's a pretty little waterfall that splits into two sections (my picture is of the larger one), and drops about 50 feet. I took my sandals off and walked in the water below the falls, and the spray felt wonderful!

We also hiked to the top of the falls, and the view of the canyon and valley below was fabulous!

Sunset was starting on our way back down, and I got a nice silhouette of a cool looking tree...

We had a nice time together (and had fun getting in a little kissy-poo downstream of the waterfall...) The only downside was my back was still hurting from having to move two printers last Friday at work, and I forgot to stretch before starting the hike... ouch. I'll probably feel this for a few days. Having a bad back sucks.

Cecret Lake

Ron took me on a date tonight... a hike up to Cecret Lake. It's a beautiful drive to get there, past Snowbird and Alta ski resorts. Absolutely lovely! We went up in the evening, so the light wasn't good for pictures-- so here's someone else's photo. :)

It wasn't too bad of a hike; about a mile roundtrip. However, it does do a little bit of elevation change, and my back still isn't recovered enough from surgery to make climbing uphill very enjoyable. It's difficult to hike when your legs keep dying on you.

On the way back, I (carefully) climbed down some rocks to get pictures of the little waterfall coming from the lake. You can see the waterfall behind the pretty yellow wildflowers (which were all over on the way there). And to top it all off, we saw a 3-point buck on the way back down. We didn't see any moose (which are common in the area)... darn. After a week of trying to spy moose in Yellowstone, we figured we'd have more luck at home. Skunked again!

Yellowstone, Day 7

I guess that technically, this was more of a "Grand Teton" day, as we packed up camp and drove out of the park this morning. We stopped for lunch at String Lake in the Tetons, which is a beautiful little lake to kayak in. We made passing hikers jealous of our lunch of grilled hamburgers and hotdogs.

I love the Grand Tetons-- it is so amazingly beautiful there. I camped there a few years ago, and am just itching to get back. It's so peaceful, and the backdrop of these stunning mountains just adds to the experience all the more.

On the drive back home from the Tetons, we amused ourselves by playing a song game-- I whistled tunes from Disney movies, and they had to try to guess the movie and the name of the song. I had a terribly dry mouth after a hour of this! :)

Jak called her mother when we got closer to home, to see if she could come home with us that night so I could take her to the dentist tomorrow. Her mother was awful to her, as usual. She insisted that Jak had to stay the night at her house that night, and that we could drive all the way back up to pick her up in the early morning (45 minute drive, usually), and then take her over an hour back down to the dentist office, and then drive her all the way back home. Jak was crying after she got off the phone, saying, "She's such a bitch when it comes to you guys. I don't know why, but she just hates you." I responded with, "But this isn't about us-- it's about you." She looked sad and said, "I know. But she doesn't care." I told her I was sorry.

Divorce sucks even worse for kids when one of the parents is an asshole.

But, even with the little spoiler at the end of the trip, we had a GREAT time. :)

Yellowstone, Day 6

We pulled our sorry bodies out of bed this morning at 6:00am. We were heading out to Lamar Valley, in the northeast part of the park, to see if we could spy any wolves. About 45 minutes later, we saw this:



And less than an hour later, we saw this guy. We were thrilled-- not many who come to Yellowstone get to see wolves... and we saw 8 of them, 3 of them fairly close up like this one.

After we got back, Ron cooked a wonderful dutch oven dinner of barbeque-apricot pork and buttery potatoes/carrots/sweet onions. Then out came the makings for s'mores again. :) When we were stuffed, we left to go try to catch the Great Fountain Geyser. It only goes off like twice a day, and we wanted to see it. And saw it, we did! This is the third (and highest) blast it came out with this eruption.

Afterwards, we did the 5.2 mile round-trip hike to Fairy Falls. Violet loved the falls, as you can see. :) My pedometer was being stupid, though-- it said the hike was just under 3 miles. So either the pedometer was lying, or the mileage signs on the trail were made to discourage too many people from hiking around. :)

I'm sorry that we have to leave tomorrow. It's been a fabulous vacation!

Yellowstone, Day 5

Happy Fourth!

Today we did the Fountain Paint Pots, and the thermal areas along the road to Old Faithful. Some of my favorite pools are in this area. Beautiful! I especially love this photo I took of the Grand Prismatic Spring-- it looks like a sun or a flower.

We then drove into West Yellowstone to celebrate the Fourth. They had a local parade, which consisted of pretty much all Yellowstone Tour buses and vans. It was a total tourist parade! The kids scored lots of candy. I had fun "heckling" the parade people-- we were yelling for one guy to throw his boat to us instead of candy; and when the Kentucky Fried Chicken people came by, we yelled like crazy at them to throw us chicken. It was fun. :)

We picked up pizza for dinner at Wild West Pizzeria. They are known for the best pizza in West Yellowstone, but I'd say they had some of the best pizza I've ever eaten in my life. You gotta eat there when you're in town!

In the park, the kids played on the teeter totters and flirted with boys. Jak had a bit of a mishap on the teeter totter-- she smacked her mouth on it, and broke her tooth.(!!!) She said it didn't hurt too bad, so we figured we'd get an emergency appointment Monday morning when we were back.

We listened to a local band play at the park, and Ron and I danced to a number of songs (to lots of applause afterwards). We like to swing dance, so it always looks very cool when we get going. Some lady intercepted us on our way off the "dance grass" and asked if she could dance with Ron. The girls were shocked, and told him when he came back that he should only dance with me. :)

We watched the fireworks, and drove back to camp late. Yawn!!!

Yellowstone, Day 4

We headed off for the east part of Yellowstone today, and started out at Upper and Lower Falls. We went down Uncle Tom's Trail down to the waterfall overlook, which has approximately 4, 628 stairs. Okay, maybe it was only like 200 or so, but at 8,000 feet altitude, it was a difficult climb back up! The rainbow was as awesome as the falls themselves, I thought.



We saw herds of buffalo down through Hayden Valley, and Jak caught a frog in a marshy meadow. We ended up at Yellowstone Lake for a late lunch, where the girls and Ron paddled the kayaks around and I took a nap. :)

We ended our day at West Thumb Geyser Basin, which has some beautiful pools. It's right on Yellowstone Lake, which makes a beautiful backdrop for the thermal area.

Got back to camp late, but not so late that we didn't have time for s'mores! Yum!

Yellowstone, Day 3

When we told people we were headed to Yellowstone, we heard over and over "Watch out for the bears!" Well, I'm here today to tell you that it's not the bears you need to watch out for, it's the buffalo!

This morning at breakfast, I was flipping pancakes on the camp stove, and the kids were at the picnic table eating. Next thing we know, three HUGE buffalo come running straight through our camp. Talk about getting your heart a-pumping!!! And none of us had our cameras at the time. Bummer. :(

Today we went to see Tower Falls, which is a gorgeous waterfall in the northeast part of the park. Then we drove over to Mammoth Hot Springs, which has (sadly) dried up, for the most part. On the way there, we took the Blacktail Plateau Drive, which is a dirt road that kind of parallels the main road. We saw four bears. First, we spotted a mama black bear and her two cubs. WAY cute! Then, we noticed a huge grizzly bear headed over to them. The mama bear sent her two cubs up into the tree, and then charged the grizzly. Wow! Those are things you usually only see on animal shows. It was very cool!

Yellowstone, Day 2

Today was going to be our longest day. I figured we'd do this one first, while the girls were still totally hyped up with excess vacation energy. :)



We did the Norris Geyer Basin, and then headed down to Old Faithful. We did the long walk behind Old Faithful, and saw a LOT of geysers go off. Very cool! We got back late, but it was worth it. I think we saw at least 10 geysers go off today!

I logged 24,941 steps on my pedometer today. My feet and back hurt!

Yellowstone, Day 1

Well, we left this morning at about 1:40am, a little later than we wanted to be. We needed to get to Ron's daughters' house by 2:00am, and ended up being about 10 minutes late. The girls who came on this trip were Jak, Nikki, Lu and Violet. Kayla was off at soccer camp this week (I hate it when we have vacations scheduled, and soccer tromps over those days!).

It was a long drive there, but we got to our campsite at Norris a little before 10:00am (after a couple stops along the way to get ice and pump up the tires on the trailer).

We got camp set up, and headed out. On the way, we saw a mother elk who had just given birth to her baby. We got to see him stand up for the first time, and watched the mother clean him off. Then we continued on, and spent the rest of the day in West Yellowstone. Everyone traipsed around the touristy shops, and spent souvenir money. We treated the kids to dinner at Dairy Queen (to the tune of $53!!!!!! Talk about tourist trap pricing...) Then, we surprised them by taking them to a play at the Playmill Theatre. We saw See How They Run, and it was as hilarious as the last time I saw it. :)

Here's the girls, posing by one of the painted buffalo that are all over the town: