Happy Independance Day! - July 4, 2010

July 3rd was the celebration in North Salt Lake - since July 4th is a Sunday.  We went to our Ward Breakfast on Saturday morning - my friend Diana is the head of the Activities Committee, so she was working on set-up and her husband needed some muscles for help.  So we got woken up early to go help set up the breakfast.  James even helped flip pancakes.  I just played at the park with the small ones from my nursery class.  We skipped out on going anyplace to watch the fireworks and watched them from a distance instead.  It was a very mellow holiday.  Except that I stayed up late after the fireworks to make a blueberry apple crisp for the post-blessing luncheon on the 4th.

On Sunday, we had been invited to Logan to witness the blessing of my new little 'cousin'.  We still went to our ward (I had to give the lesson to the nursery class.  It was essentially about loving one another.  The main story was the Good Samaritan, but the coloring page was all about diversity). and then left as soon as possible afterwards.  So we were late to their chapel and missed the blessing, but we stayed for lunch and visiting anyway!

Tammy, Brett, and Kyrie Price - July 4, 2010 in Logan, UT- blessing day!

The Glen Price Family - Tammy Kyrie and Brett, Braeden Erin Jett JB and Kyan, Keri and Marcus, Ariana and Craig, Sydney Dallas Scott Jaxson Hunter and Sarah, Kelley and Chad, Nancy Glen and Maddox, Michelle and Alan.

The 007 posse - Friend, Friend, Jordan, James, Craig, Scott and Maddox, Alan, JB, Glen, Chad and Brett

On our way home, we decided to drive up by Bear Lake to look over the view.  It definitely wasn't on the direct way home, but it was a different way home.  We stopped in Randolph, UT to peek in the window of the Wilford Woodruff Home:

An antelope - he crossed the road right in front of us.  His two lady friends stayed on the side and crossed after we left.

We followed highway 39 past Monte Cristo campground and tons of 4-wheeler and snowmobile trails and ended up driving past Pineview Reservoir and Snow Basin before wandering our way back home. 

Happy Independence Day!

Malan Peak - June 30, 2010

Hiking with Aunt Lynnette (white t-shirt), Karen (pink) and Donna (blue) up Malan Peak in Ogden.

I had the morning off of work.  It is the last day of the month, and I was scheduled to work until 9 p.m. to get the last of the bills in for the month.  So I got a free morning and Aunt Lynnette invited me to go hiking with her.  So glad!  We left the parking lot before the sun came up to hike in the cool-ish morning.  Aunt Lynn brought these neck-kerchiefs that you soak in water and they cool your neck for hours.  LOVED it - thank you!

Donna and Aunt Lynnette modelling their neck-kerchiefs.

Aunt Lynn and Jessi at the top of Malan Peak - incredible view of Ogden.

Whooo  Hoooo! I made it!  And I only got passed by one little old man.

Had fun photographing the wild flowers.

And the RATTLE SNAKE!

Really pretty hike, definitely worth doing again!  Thanks for the invite Aunt Lynnette!

Utah Highway 35 - June 25-27, 2010

Another reason we love Utah is that there is so much to explore.   Just toss the futon mattress into the back of The Outlaw and the camping gear and away we go!  This weekend we chose Utah Highway 35 along the southern edge of the Uinta Mountains.  We spent the first night at the Mill Hollow Reservoir Campground with the fantastic 'white noise' of the reservoir's spillway just down the hill from our tent.

We brought the bikes and I had 'googled' mountain biking trails near our campsite. There was a nice long one called Heber Mountain and it was 17 miles round trip from the reservoir to the top of Heber Mountain.  James was smart and drove us up the dirt roads until we were only about 3 miles from the top and then we rode the rest of the way.

Well, James rode the whole way. 

My bike got tired, so I had to push it the last half-mile or so to the top.  But I made it!

There isn't a fancy sign to say you're at the top, but the road ends and we did find this little post-thing that says there is a $250 penalty for removing the little post-thing.

The view was really beautiful and once I recovered from pushing the bike up a mountain, the ride down was hilarious fun!

Video - Jessi mountain biking

Video - James mountain biking

We had lots of time to scout out our next campsite, so we went exploring.  And even though it had a really, really pretty campsite along the river bank, we decided not to spend the night in Hades.

Instead, we drove a crazy dirt road called "Blind Creek Road" along Granddaddy Mountain and some really spectacular switchbacks.  We discovered that navigating by road atlas is almost navigating blind.  We had no idea how steep and twisty the road would be, or that it would be a dirt road most of the way.  And when we got close to the campground we were looking for - we discovered this beautiful dam:

And the atlas didn't show a body of water there at all!  I checked the date of the dam construction against the copyright date of the atlas and the dam was built before the atlas was printed.  It was a very good surprise to find the Upper Stillwater Reservoir and even better, the road from then on was paved.  We picked a campsite with a view and James grilled up some burgers and corn on the cob.  Yum!

In the morning, the water level was lower, or there were more logs blocking the spillway because the water patterns were different.

And it was Sunday, so our weekend explore was over.  We drove through Duschesne on our way back and took Highway 40 past the Starvation Reservoir.  It is a significant body of water in the desert.  We saw a couple of these "Dominguez y Escalante Expedition 1776 to 1976" markers with history of their explorations in Utah.

We also drove past Strawberry Reservoir and Deer Creek Reservoir.  I think maybe Utah has more reservoirs than Idaho based on the number we passed this weekend.  And we ended our drive by going over the Guardsmans Road from Midway to Brighton to check on the snow levels and play some Frisbee in the Solitude parking lot.

I do like that Frisbee.

UT Jazz NBA Draft Party - June 24, 2010

Every year (at least the last 2 years), the Utah Jazz throw an NBA Draft Party at the Energy Solutions Arena.  They give out free hot dogs and soda, have opportunities for pictures with the Jazz Dancers, Play Draft BINGO and give out free tickets to a Bees baseball game.  Last year, James went by himself (I was working late-ish and didn't meet up with him).  This year, we turned it into date night.  FREE date night, with a bonus date - the future Bees game - thrown in.  AWESOME!

James at the arena - they blocked off most of the seats so that all the people were in the lower sections in front of their "stage."  The ESPN coverage of the draft was playing on the big screen overhead.  They had a season ticket holder announce the Jazz first-round draft pick to us in the arena, just before the pick was announced by the commissioner on ESPN.  "Gordon Hayward!"

My draft BINGO card.  As a player was drafted by any team, we crossed his name off the BINGO card.  There were only 4 prizes and by the time we left the only one left was for the outside edge (top row, bottom row and outside columns).  I had two names left and we gave our cards (and all the cards we'd scrounged from people who had already left) away to some guys who were determined to wait it out.  We left at the end of the first round.

The Stockton (right) and Malone (left) statues outside the arena.  I remember them playing for the Jazz, but I don't know if I ever got to see them play in person or if I just remember them from TV...

It was a fun, free date night.  James would have liked about 3 more hot dogs.  They were pretty small.  But hey, free is free.

7/6/10 postscript: The free Bees baseball tickets were for specific home games at the end of June and early, early July.  So we went to a Salt Lake Bees v. Tacoma Rainiers game on July 6th (Happy Birthday Mom!).  It was a beautiful evening, not too hot.  

We wondered what the mascot of the Rainiers might be - since their ball cap just has a mountain with a "T" coming out the top.  I googled them - the mascot is Rhubarb the Reindeer. Is that more or less embarrasing than Bumble the Bee?

I learned that when a batter hits a home run with no other runners on base, they still get 1 RBI - for hitting themselves home.  So their RBI stat will ALWAYS be equal to or greater than their Home Run stat. 

Sadly, the Bees lost.  Sad again, the game was free, but we spent some money on soda and a churro - actually that was yummy and not very sad - except that it cost money.  More sadness, I didn't take any pictures. 

Happily, it was another fun date night.  :) 

Hiking Farmington Canyon and Brighton - June 19-20, 2010

One of the things I really enjoy about summers in Utah is the hiking.  I really don't like to be sweaty and hot, but it is okay to be sweaty and hot if you are working for it!

On Saturday, James and I went hiking up Farmington Canyon.  In the past, we have driven up the road and parked at the campground, hiked down to the waterfall and then back up to the car.  Today, we parked at the lower parking lot and hiked up for however long we chose to hike.  We didn't make it to the upper waterfall this time, but we still had a great hike.

We did stop at a lower waterfall for a bit to check out this tire. 

There is a surprising amount of bits of cars in the canyon.  The road is high up above the creek and it is a dirt road with lots of switchbacks on the steep mountain side.  I suspect that if a car goes over the edge, the parts just stay wherever they land.  I wanted to get a closer look at this falls, so I stepped on rocks until I was at a nice spot for a picture.

And then I promptly fell into the water while working my way back to the trail.  Squish squish squish for the rest of the hike.  That is when James told me he is buying me new hiking shoes for my birthday. Happy Birthday to me!

James checking out the view.

These guys were way, way up near the road, shooting at clay disks.  You could hear the shots echoing around the canyon and we wondered if any of the clay or shells or bullets would rain down on us.  They didn't.

We hiked for about an hour before we turned back and ran the rest of our Saturday errands.

On Sunday, our Sunday drive after church took us up to Brighton.  We were interested to see if there was still any snow.  This is the view of the Great Western Lift - not much snow, just a little. 

We decided to hike for a little bit and James brought along his flexible Frisbee.  We played for a while near the Milli lift line and there was enough of a breeze that I could throw the Frisbee toward the lift tower and it would be caught by the wind and turn back to where James was standing.

Since we were almost to the Twin Lakes Dam anyway, we hiked the rest of the way to the lake - then we finally saw some leftover snow and threw rocks out onto the slush in the water.

Another two or three weeks, and there won't be any snow left. We'll have to go up and check it out!

Idaho Adventure - June 10-13, 2010

We LOVE road trips!  We had plans to go to Idaho for the Sawtooth Relay.  We've been the volunteer support part of a relay team from Eagle for a couple of years.  This year the team didn't enter the race, but we didn't get official notification that we weren't needed until the week before the race.  We already had Friday off of work, so we packed up The Outlaw anyway and headed to Eagle for Eagle Fun Days instead.  And since we had an extra day, we planned to drive through Sun Valley and Stanley (the race route) on our way to Eagle.

Thursday night we planned to camp in the car (the futon mattress fits into the back of the XTerra just perfectly and makes a very comfortable bed) and wanted to camp somewhere on the way to Sun Valley.  We got to Shoshone after dark and thought that the Magic Reservoir was just off the highway and would make a nice campsite.  We were navigating by headlights and couldn't find the water!  We finally parked just off a dirt road in a grassy field and planned to find our way back out in the morning.

Friday morning we woke up to bird noise and ducks - we camped "in" the reservoir after all!

We enjoyed our drive through Sun Valley and along the race route.  Plenty of "Honey Buckets" set up at the different check points for the race - which would be on Saturday.  At Stanley, we forgot to turn and were driving along the Salmon River. James thought the scenery was a bit different and we finally stopped at Sunbeam Hot Springs to check the atlas.  We were only 14 miles out of our way.

This is the old bath house - constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps and now is completely empty.

This is how the water gets from the springs (just above the highway) to the river.

We thought the water would mix right at the bank and be comfortable.  WRONG - the hot water scorched our calves and the cold water froze our toes.  We didn't wade for long.

Our next "wrong" turn was on purpose.  We drove up to Cascade to visit Oma and Uncle Neil.  THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for dinner.

Uncle Neil suggested we stop by the Cascade Reservoir dam spillway on our way out of town.  It was raging!  The view from a dry distance.

The view from the parking lot at the bottom of the dam.

A rainbow from the spray.

The view from the top of the spillway.

Our final stop on the way home was at Ridgeline Specialty Sports in the Winco shopping center.  Friends from Eagle were having their Grand Opening on Saturday.  Friday night was the pre-grand-opening-party-for-friends.  So we stopped by to see the new shop and inventory and have some chips and salsa.

Saturday was the Eagle Fun Days parade, complete with water fight.

Kurt filling the water guns and kiddie pool.

Carlee selling CJ's Sweets and Treats. YUM!

Lining the street and hoping for candy.

After the parade we ditched the downtown crowds and headed for Gerber Park and the water park there.  Clay and Kristen brought some softball gear and we played a little ball.  Aspen was the ball girl.  We'd throw the ball in her general direction and she'd run to pick it up, and then run right up to Kristen to throw her the ball. 

Kristen

James

We had dinner and watched USA v. England World Cup Soccer at Clay and Kristen's.  Clay had forbidden anyone from telling him anything about the game so he could watch it after dinner.  James and I already knew the score and what time during the game each goal was scored.  We also knew exactly what the sports talk radio guys felt about the score, about the goals, about the referees and the players.  While we watched, James would nudge me, "USA's about to score...." and we'd get to see the goal we'd heard about on the radio.  It was a tie.  1:1.

On Sunday we had a wake up committee.  This is Bree and a battery powered dinosaur.  At one point they were on our bed, McKayla and Carter were on our bed, and Ellie was watching from the doorway.

Before church, we went over to Clay and Kristen's to go to the Veladrome bike park.  I wanted to get pictures of Kristen and Clay and James doing the big jumps, but the battery was super low.  I'm lucky to get these pics...

Emma - love that grin!

Aspen - love those stripey socks!

Kristen pushing Aspen around the dirt jumps

James - wheelie!

We went to church with Kurt and Carlee and family.  Kurt brought a package of skittles and handed it over to James - who was then the favorite uncle.  Christy would sit on my lap to color, but Jake only came over for skittles.  James taught him "Pick-A-Hand."  James would put a skittle or two into his hand, close his hand and then put both hands together and shake.  Then separate his closed hands and offer them to Jake to choose which hand to open for the chance at a skittle.  At first, Jake didn't know what to do.  After watching Tyler and Christy choose - and receive skittles, he finally would touch James' hands.  Both of them.  Every time.  Smart guy.

So sad when it is time to go.  Dinner eaten, car packed, chalk art completed.

The Jessi James Gang Was Here.