Cecret Lake - August 15, 2009

Ready for hiking in the middle of August? It's cool and there's a good breeze, so take a jacket & a stocking hat!

Look! Fresh snow on the mountains - whoo hooo! Let it snow!

My favorite hike in Little Cottonwood Canyon is a pretty short one - drive all the way to Alta, park near the campground, walk under the chairlift and up the hill to Cecret Lake.

Plenty of wildlife to see - this beautiful bull!

A salamander?

Can you see it? There is a pika in this picture - a hint, he's pretty close to the center of this picture. It is a cell phone picture, so it may not be the best quality photo (scroll to the very end of the post for help)...

Wild flowers (& fresh snow!)

Beautiful blue sky, mountain peaks, (fresh snow), wild flowers...

Oh, and a lake (& fresh snow!)

We stopped for dinner at a place called Wing Coop -

Lots of sauces to try - we recommend the teriyaki!

And very interesting decor!



Pika REVEALED! He's still impossible to see, but he practically dragged his branch of leaves across my feet to get to his rock. Busy little guy, the fresh snow must have him thinking of winter.

Did I mention that there was new snow at Alta this weekend?

EQ Softball Tournament - August 12-14, 2009

Our Elders Quorum participated in a softball tournament that was held every evening. On Wednesday night, we WON! On Thursday night, the other team forfeitted, so we had batting & fielding practice. On Friday night, we had the bare minimum of players to field a team (8 out of 10), so we had a rough time and ended up losing the game. James played in the outfield and had some great plays and some close misses.

This is where I got to hang out while James played - made some new friends!

This was an almost dive & catch - one of my favorite action shots!

Game over, good game team!

Ready for flag football everyone?

Sunday Drive - August 9, 2009

Today we decided to drive down the freeway south into Utah County and then find the road that goes up over the hills between Alpine and Draper. We've already explored the road on the Salt Lake County side - it wanders up the hill above the Draper Temple and through some very fancy neighborhoods.

So we went around the mountain, past Cabelas, past Highland and into Alpine. We wandered through neighborhoods and even a park with lots of dirt roads (Lambert Park) and past orchards. I thought the road would start in Alpine, but as the morning ended and church time got closer we had to try a different tactic. We looked for houses on the top of the hill. Then followed the road down the hill towards us. We finally found our road in Highland - Highland Boulevard. Toward the county line, it changes into Suncrest Drive and then in Salt Lake County it changes into Traverse Ridge Road. Then we popped back onto the freeway and hurried to eat lunch and get to church (a few minutes late).

Utah County and Utah Lake:

A view of Alpine from the Highland Boulevard - waaaay over there at the base of the mountains:
Salt Lake County at 45 mph from The Outlaw: From the ridge top (but not in this picture) you can see the Draper Temple, the Jordan River Temple and the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and a large number of chapel steeples.
Beautiful day, beautiful drive - Alpine is a pretty town and we'd love to take bikes and explore Lambert Park with all its dirt trails.