Labor Day Weekend

For Labor Day some friends and I drove down to the Escalante area of Utah - down to Grand Staircase and backpacked into Coyote Gulch. Lindsey had tried to go down there earlier in the summer over Memorial Day weekend, but there had been so much rain the week leading up to the weekend that the river was swollen and completely impassable - and you spend much of your time hiking through the river. Coyote Gulch is the canyon that the Escalante River winds through and this time around the river was practically only a trickle. We hiked in 5 miles to Jacob Hamblin Arch. It literally took us all day to hike in since we kept coming up on really cool stuff - like waterfalls and towering canyon walls and even an outhouse caused us to stop and enjoy it's convenience!

We originally set up camp on a sandy beach just a couple feet above the riverbed. But later than evening a pretty good thunderstorm rolled in and dumped on us. We were kind of under a outcropping so we all jumped back under it so didn't have to get into our tents, but even then that outcropping didn't provide much protection since the water began to run down the wall. After the storm let up, the river started getting louder so I went over there and watched the river rise by about a foot. I started getting really nervous about flooding since Coyote Gulch is known for it's flash floods. But we tried to go to bed anyways. But just as I was getting in my sleeping bag, the river began to get even louder, so Lindsey and I went out and watched the river rise another foot - which brought it within a foot of our sandy beach. Both times the river rose, it only took a couple minutes and on the second time were were seeing debris floating down in the river. So that's when we decided to move camp to higher ground. In the morning we found out that the water stopped rising after that, but you know what....? I slept better because of it and better safe than sorry.

So we hiked out 6 miles, ate a yummy sandwich lunch at the cars and then drove the 40-mile dirt road back out to Escalante. We did have a couple exciting mud-spots in the dirt road though. That storm the night before sent little rivers over the low parts of the road and created some fairly long mud holes to drive through. Thankfully we had 4WD. Oh! And one other side note - as we hiked out we saw a construction cone in the riverbed not a mile or two from our campsite and I swear I saw that cone on the side of the dirt road marking a spot where the road was beginning to wash away! We also took a detour to Devil's Garden along the dirt road - that was pretty cool - it's the last picture in this entry.

Then we headed to Zion National Park to go canyoneering. We had a yummy dutch oven lasagna dinner with salad and dutch oven peach cobbler for dinner that night. We were all starved because there was only 7 of us and we ate both dutch ovens full of food. Tim scored big points when he finished off the lasagna which made for 3 big helpings for him. But that lasagna turned out surprisingly well!

So Monday we headed out to go find Spry Canyon to go canyoneering through it... and we hiked and hiked and scrambled up rocky mountain-sides and scaled down them and .... all to no avail. We could night find the entrance to the canyon. We hiked around for 4 hours or so. It was beautiful country though so no one was too disappointed, but the later it got the less likely we were going to get out of the canyon and on the drive home until late that evening. So I think that was bearing on everyone's mind as well. So, in stead, we hiked back out and went into town to enjoy a meal at a Mexican restaurant and then hit the road, getting home around 10 pm.

It was a fabulous weekend! It's always great to have friends to play with and ones that are so flexible and fun!

Home Sweet Home

I went home to Boise for a short little vacation and just got back tonight. It was a much-needed respite! I don't think my mom and I slowed down until I left this morning. She obliged me to visit some of my old haunts!

Thursday:
Drove to Warren, Idaho where my old cabin is - and did so in awe at all the burned forest that was all along the dirt road leading to Warren. There was a massive forest fire 2 years ago. I was so sad to see just how much was burned.
Walked around and scouted out the changes in the ghost town.
Hiked to Bemis Rock - okay mom hiked the base, I hiked to the top.
Stopped in McCall on the way back to Boise for a delectable and much CRAVED trout dinner.

Friday:
Went on a nice long road bike ride in anticipation of all the greasy food I'd be eating that evening at the fair! Thankfully, there were no dogs to chase me this time! (All you Boiseans - riding straight out Cloverdale Road is a fabulous ride!)
Lunched with a good high school friend and her darling little 3-year old son - who is a total flirt! :)
Rode fair rides, gawked at the 213 lbs pumpkin and other fun prize-winning fair crafts, photos, flower arrangements and quilts.
Cooed at the darling sheep, goats... and the HUGE cows and horses.
Ate my body weight in grease:
Half a Corn Dog
Black Cherry Shaved Ice
One slice of Hawaiian Pizza
One Ice Cream Potato
Half of a Scone
Endured 100+ degree temperatures while at the fair!
Watched a kid on the swings ride puke and spray the crowd below (I was on a swing at the time and safely out of the spray zone)

Saturday:
Went for another road bike ride to work off the food I ate at the fair the night before
Watched my nephew - who is a sophomore on the varsity soccer team for his high school - play his first big soccer game for this coming season
Took a 2-hour nap
Made an appearance at my friend's wedding reception
Watched the James Bond Goldfinger with my sister and her family

Sunday:
Church! Of course. :)
40-minute nap
Go with my sister and her family to listen to my nephew's patriarchal blessing
Get home taught with my sister and her family
Family BBQ!!! Of huge t-bone steaks, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, green salad, mushrooms, and cake afterward.

Monday:
Breakfast with Robyn! and my mom.
Then I hit the road to come back to Utah.

It was a lot in just a few days, but it was wonderful. Wonderful to be with family, to be home (for the first time since Christmas), and to just get out of dodge!

Rednecks & the Demolition Derby

I went to my first ever demolition derby today. It was wild! It was so fun to watch all the cars run into each other and see how long they can keep moving... even with smoke coming from their engines, flat tires, tires that have fallen off, tires that are skeewampus on the hub.... and a host of other maladies! I was so obsessed with the purple car in the photos below.

I also enjoyed my own personal redneck: Dave Dean the farmer-dude. :)

Meteor Shower Gazing

Well, it was my 3rd Annual Meteor Shower Gazing and Dutch Ovening event! I always invite too many friends to feed from my dutch oven and I always miss the peak of the meteor shower by 24 hours! Oh well. We still saw quite a few good meteors.... and we also had a pretty awesome dry lightning storm to go along with the meteor shower.

The fresh peach cobbler was the hit of the night.... the caramel cake ... not so much. This time we brought along some bocci ball! That was a hit. And so was the ..... STEAM ROLLING!!!! I loooove steam rolling everyone. It was so fun. I was taught the finer tricks of steam rolling that night. So look out from now on! :)

Equation for Losing What You Didn't Want in the First Place

Keeping track of calories on livestrong.com's Daily Plate
+
Rockin' awesome spin class at the gym
+
One realistic expectation of losing weight
=
17 lbs shed since February

Manti Utah Temple Trip

Nicole and I took the day off and drove down to Manti to do a temple session there. I have always wanted to go down there ever since I received my endowments ... and almost got married there .... 7 years ago! And I finally made it down there.

It was the neatest experience. We just took our time as we walked through the temple, admired the workmanship of the pioneers and soaked in the session. There was one room in the temple though.... IT WAS AMAZING!! There were murals on all four walls. And guess who painted them? Minerva Teichert. I loooooove her work. I won't begin to describe them to you because this article that I found on the BYU Studies website goes into great detail on it and even provides some pictures of the murals. But I will say this: those murals added new meaning and insight into the temple session for me and that contributed to my neat experience at the Manti Temple.

After the temple session was over, a temple worker showed us the "Needlepoint" sealing room where sisters in the area made the seat covers by needlepoint and how their names are imprinted on little plaques on the underside of the chairs, and the sealing room where the walls look like they have wallpaper but the pattern is actually painted. And I can't forget to mention the turquoise sealing room .... wow. Oh wow. It was so ornate and beautiful. And then the famous spiral staircases.... the temple worker told us there are only 3 such staircases of that size in the United States and the Manti Temple has 2 of them.

The Big Ouchy

Hooo-ie! Have I got a story to tell you. I took a fall. A hard one. And it was bad enough that I'm not disappointed that I'm out of biking for a little while. Yeah - it was that bad.

There was a race. At Sundance. And I just got a new rear cassette on my bike to make the gears a little more beginner-friendly (aka easier). And there is a big incline (big to beginners) on the course. I've always had to walk it before. But this time I was determined. I was determined to make it up that incline. This time I was also running on 5 hours of sleep. And a spin class in the morning where I already felt the effects of little sleep and a toll on my legs.

I was 2/3 the way up this incline!! I was SO ALMOST THERE!!!! And I was only 1 or 2 miles into the 6-mile race. All of a sudden, I spun out.... I was pedaling like a mad-woman.... but going no where. The incline is on the side of a steep mountain-side. I didn't get clipped out before I started to fall .... and fall down the down-hill side of the steep mountain-side.

After that I did what my body normally does when I'm seeing myself getting hurt. My vision went black... I went limp.... and I don't remember exactly what happened. All I know is I slid down the mountain for 10 or 15 feet and a tree stopped me... I stopped myself with my head - thank goodness for helmets. I had stopped thank goodness. And so I started to get up and drag my bike out of the branches it was stuck in. But then I started to slide down the mountain again so I had to stand against the tree. At that time, the woman that was ahead of me came running back down the trail to see if I was okay. As far as I could tell at the time, I had a lot of scrapes and cuts all over my body, some pretty good ones on my ankle that were already bleeding like a mother, and a lot of dirt in every orifice on my head - as well as down my shirt and shorts.

She helped me drag my bike up to the trail since I did not have the strength to get it done by myself. Once back up on the trail I just sat there for a few minutes. Collected myself. Got the shakes out of my system. Took a little inventory of all my wounds and determined that they were probably just surface flesh wounds, although my ankle ones were bleeding pretty good and beginning to bleed onto my sock and shoe.

But what did I do? I got back on my bike, MUCH MORE TIMIDLY, and finished the race. I wanted to cry when I finished it. I was so glad to be done... and I was really beginning to feel the pain. The first aid guy cleaned me up a bit and then I was feeling better so I went to dinner with some friends.

I also had a sweet visitor bring me a Wendy's Frosty and give me some REALLY nice hugs. :) And then I soaked in the tub for a while to clean out all my wounds. But the big cuts on my ankle were still bleeding. So my nurse friend, Lindsey, came and took a look at my ankle and dressed it. I could have gotten maybe a stitch or two on those two puncture wounds - they were that deep.

And then my ankle and foot really swelled up Thursday at work. So I went to a doc-in-the-box (as my sister calls urgent care facilities) that night - they took x-rays, gave me my first tetanus shot that I remember in forever, and told me I had sprained my ankle too.

So now I'm wearing this awful brace thing on my ankle. It is so hot. I think I'm done wearing it. It just annoys me now! As you can see by the picture of my arm, you can see I also got a pretty bad bruise on my arm. I wish you could have seen it a few days ago - when it was in its prime - black and purple like you wouldn't believe.

So yeah. That's my story. Crazy huh? I'm not really sure how I sprained my ankle, but I did it. Just like me do it too. So wanna guess how many times I've sprained my ankles in the past year? 4 times. 4 times! 2 while mountain biking. 2 just being a klutz and walking wrong. Ugh.