Funemployment

The reader may or may not know that I have been, for all intents and purposes, unemployed for the past month. The details are not important, just know that I had A LOT of free time on my hands. I really hate being idle and there is only so much job hunting one can do in a 24 hour period, so I did what any normal woman living in provo utah would do......okay, maybe I did what any normal hippy living in provo utah would do:

These are the fruits of my last hike (I WILL be going back for a picture from the top by the way, I just haven't done it yet.....Carrie, you know I'm talking to you!) Okay, maybe the books aren't actually the fruits, but the fruits, which are actually leaves, had to be pressed in these large and expensive books in order to become the amazing wall hangings seen in the next two pictures. It doesn't work if they are not large as well as expensive, and it helps if they put you into some kind of lasting debt to even think about owning them (don't let the USED sticker throw you, that just means they are expensive AND in poor condition).

Here are the leaves in their finished condition. I put them in a boarder on one wall in my room, I would have covered the entire wall, but I just haven't collected enough yet.

I tried to take a picture of my favorite leaves, but believe it or not, I couldn't decided which ones I liked over the others, so just love the ones you see and be happy.

The property I currently live on has some well established trees, I believe one is a mulberry tree and the other is quite possibly a black walnut. These are some of the bags of walnuts I collected from my backyard.

And then I removed the husks and sorted out the rotten ones. I was aware that walnut husks contain a very strong dye, so I wore protective yellow gloves, but apparently there was a hole in one of the didgits because now my thumb has the plague.

Or maybe it is just the black death. I even tried Lava Soap Dad, nothing.

I also tried to go a bit further on my trip around Utah Lake, I didn't make it all the way around but I did make it about 10 miles further than last time. Funny thing is, by the time I make a round trip out of it, I am only about 12 miles short of the total distance it would have taken to go all the way around (I went 58 miles round trip and the total for the full lake ride is around 70 miles)... anyway, I went farther than I should have riding a mountain bike and on a windy day, so it took a little while to recover from that one. Maybe next time, and maybe with a real road bike. I don't remember how I made the picture last time, but this one is pretty cool because you can move it around and zoom in or out if you want.

So the moral of the story is: I started a new job as a cook last week and although I had me some fun while I wasn't working, I am glad to be making deposits again.

The Peak

Recently, I have a lot of time on my hands while I look for a new job, so I decided I would take a little time off from the hunt and enter the mountains. I never really know where I am going when I start out, but I knew there were several trails in Rock Canyon I have yet to explore, so that is where I went. Squaw Peak Trail is where I finally settled, not a very long hike but it is mostly uphill, so it is still a bit of a challenge. Here are some pictures of my adventure:

The colors were pretty fantastic, although most of the leaves had already fallen to the ground.....so I spent most of my hike looking down rather than up.

The obligatory picture of me, I don't know if you can see it but I have a fist full of the leaves similar to the ones shown above. I rarely start these hikes out with the intention of collecting, but I can't help myself when I see the perfect leaf.......there are a lot of perfect leaves.

I took a few detours from the original trail, and one of these side tracks lead me right into a rafter of wild turkeys! (you can also call them a gang, but they weren't all that intimidating so I will stick to rafter) They couldn't really hear me coming because the dead leaves they were walking in were so loud, but I am pretty sure they wouldn't have run very fast even if I didn't sneak up on them. After they saw me, it was a rather half-hearted retreat with frequent stops to pick at the ground for bugs.

As usual, I tried to capture the beauty of the scene, but it never really comes through in the image. Regardless, here is one of the spots on my descent which caused me to stop and just take it in. I hope everyone gets a chance to take in fall before it is all covered in snow.

I did go all the way to the top, but it is just an overlook of Utah Valley, so I didn't take any pictures. If anyone wants one though, I would be happy to go back up again to take it.

Timpanookee.....round 2, this time for real

AKA epic adventure from last Tuesday:

So I took heaps of pictures and did not want to upload each one of them, so I just put them in a slide show. I couldn't get all the photos on this time though, I so will update them when I get some free space in my flickr account. I put descriptions on each picture but I haven't figured out how to get them to show up in the slide show yet......hints anyone?

Anyway, I had a good time communing with nature and I hope you can share in some of that with these photos:

Epic Adventure Saturdays

Most Saturdays I wake up early with a need for adventure.  Sometimes I do a long run (10+ miles), sometimes I go hiking, sometimes I rollerblade up Provo Canyon and sometimes I ride my bike.  This past Saturday I decided I wanted to ride around Utah Lake.  I mapped it out and realized it is a 70+ mile trip.....my adventurous spirit was deflated a little, but not crushed; so I rode around and got lost a few times but finally found the first leg of the ride up to the lake.  I did 20.5 miles there (add about 5 for getting lost) and then turned around before I got myself into some serious trouble.

I got a pretty crispy sunburn on the back of my calves; I don't know why after about 24 years of sunburns I am still surprised when I spend 4 hours outside without sunscreen, and end up looking like a lobster.....maybe I will figure it out someday.

Goblin Valley (leg three)

On the way back we had a little more time to work with because Esther had to cancel her rafting trip due to inclement weather (and me needing to be back at work), so we went the long way home and stopped in Goblin Valley along the way.  This area is cool because there are no regulations about climbing on the formations. We ran and climbed all over the valley.  It doesn't take very much imagination to see the goblins.

The colors are cool here, most of the valley is red rock but up in the higher levels of the formations the rock kind of a grey white.  You can kind of see the goblin king in this picture, it is the tall white pillar just to the left of the white mountain.

Moab (leg two)

The next stop was in Moab.  It was considerably warmer here, but we got there just in time for a really great wind storm.  We went into Arches National Park but we could hardly stay on our feet for the wind.  So we went down this canyon south of the park which was shielded from the wind.  We didn't know what would be here but we saw some trail heads so we picked one and found that this spot was by far superior to the park.  This is a bridge that is getting pretty close to arch-hood.

There weren't many spring flowers out, but this cactus was nice

This is the best arch we saw, it is called Corona Arch and it was spectacular in the morning sun, it is probably about 3 stories high and we had to climb around and up a big hill so we didn't see it until the very end

This one is mostly for Martell, I don't know what these are but they look like petrified mud drops, they were all over on the way to Corona Arch, my camera stopped working for a while after this because it was cold but I am pretty sure there were some petrified dinosaur tracks up there too.  Esther didn't think so but I am pretty confident that I am right because I usually am.

This is the ledge on the other side of Corona Arch, again it is hard to capture the magnitude of the scene, but it was a drastic drop to the bottom.....I am glad we didn't do a night hike on this one.

Bryce Canyon Continued

One of the cool hikes we did, yes it was cold and it kept switching between blizzard and calm, but the sun came out and the canyon walls blocked us from the wind so it wasn't so bad

Another cool hike we did.  you can't really tell from the picture but trail is completely covered in snow on this part and it was really steep so we had to forge our own trail because no one else had come that way since the storm.  Esther is kind of petrified by heights but she was super brave and followed me.  Like most hikes one lives through....it turned out to be very much worth it for the experience, not to mention the view at the end.

It is pretty tricky for the trees here because the ground erodes so quickly, they are tough though; grow just about anywhere

The second night we used better survival skills; we went to the fuel station in town, purchased some hand-warmer and stuck them in our socks.  We also had wet feet from the hikes in the snow so at the end of the day we took shelter in this toilet that was pretty posh for camping.  It had a heater and this moment was the only time I was warm the entire trip.  In case you were wondering, that is 4 layers on the top and 4 layers on the bottom.