Spudman!

Rob and I both participated in the "Spudman" in Burley, Idaho. It was my first triathalon--Rob's third, but longest. I thought I'd like it, but I wasn't sure. I was especially worried about the biking part because I don't bike! It happened on July 25, 2009. Exciting, scary, and a ton of fun! We started off with a mile swim in the Snake River, then we biked 24 miles and then ran 6 miles. Cath was our official photographer, and my brother Dave came too (as a spectator!).

This is a fun picture of the swim. With 2000 participants, it was broken into 7 waves of about 300 people per wave. Rob was assigned wave 4, starting at 7:30 am, and I was in wave 6 which started at 7:50 am. Swimming in open water sure is harder than swimming in a pool! The good news is that this triathalon is touted as "Home of the World's Fastest Swim Course." The Snake River was actually running even faster than usual--4 1/2 miles an hour. A mile in a pool takes me 40 minutes. I did this one in 22 minutes and Rob did it in 25 minutes.

Here we are finishing the bike course. The pic on the left is Rob (he's in navy blue), then I'm the middle biker (tiny image) in the center photo, with my back in the right photo. This was almost at the finish line. My biking time was 1 hour and 35 minutes, Rob's time was 1 hour and 32 minutes.

Here's Rob running across the finish line after the running leg (last leg). The final hundred or so feet was downhill on grass, so it was easy to sprint to the end. Part of the run was on the road and part was on canal banks. It was a 6 mile run--the strong point for both Rob and me. Rob's running time was 1:06 and mine was 59 minutes.

And here I am at the finish. It was pretty exciting to finish! Rob and I both felt like real winners. I'm pretty sure we'll do the Spudman again (if we can get in--it's a tough one to get in because it's super popular and they do a drawing).

Here we are with the Snake River in the background. My total time was 3:08 and Rob's was 3:19. A good time was had by all!!!

My Birthday

Happy 53rd!

To paraphrase a 1963 pop song sung by Lesley Gore, "It's my party and I'll climb if I want to . . ." For my birthday I climbed Mt. Olympus! Wonderful time had by all (all being me!). I left home at about 8:00 am, was climbing by 8:30, summited at about 11:30, spent a half hour enjoying the view, and was back at my car just after 2:30 pm. I really had a wonderful climb.


On the left is Mt. Olympus from the valley, and on the right is a pic of the top of Mt. Olympus, as well as a view of the valley. It's absolutely a gorgeous view! It's a pretty hard hike, but well worth it!
Rob took this pic for me at the end of the day--back at our house (and also the first pic on the blog). Since no one was with me, I couldn't get a pic of me on the mountain. Rob had me take off my glasses because "I look more prettier that way." :)


That evening the fam met in Lehi at Tepanyaki. So so food, fabulous company. The above 2 pics show the fam--Wendy, Kimball, me, Rach, Karen, McKay and Steph. Rob was the official photographer. The pics below show 1) the restaurant and 2) our cook. It's kind-of like Beni Hana where the cook puts on a show as he cooks the dinner. Good show. I didn't think much of the food. Mostly, though, it's just not my "kind" of food. Kimball loves the place. So does Karen's Sam.

And finally we finished off the evening at Kimball's with Rob's version of Aunt Timme's famous cheesecake. It was a great day.

McKay/Steph Open House

This is what the photos should have looked like--beautiful couple in beautiful yard. But the truth of the matter is that it was raining cats and dogs! An hour before the open house we decided to "call it" and we quickly set up the Relief Society room at the church and held the reception there instead of outside in our lovely yard. It actually looked quite nice--considering--and we had a great reception.

We put up a sign in our driveway telling our guests to go to the church, and then we had these sandwich boards set up along the route, guiding people who didn't know where our church was.

Here's the beautiful couple.

A couple of views of the line. The one on the left shows Kiera, who was a helper, and guests Jody Barney & son and Annie Gamez, as well as McKay, Steph, Ramona & Ken. The one on the right shows the same people, adding in Randy & Ken Jr. (Payne), the back of Mikela Ouimette (also a helper) and Rob.

This is a cute view of Kiera, with Wendy and Emma and Megan Greenwood in the background, Rachel (fairly hidden), Kimball and Rob. On the right is Delene Leonard (who helped with refreshments), Wade Greenwood and Ken Payne. This one also has a nice view of one of their engagement photos.

Photos of some of our favorite people. On the left is the Allgoods, who surprised us by coming. Jared & Kim live here, but Dave & Stephanie live in Redmond, Washington. In the center is Rachel and her dear friends, Peter Hyatt and Andrew Palmer (brother and best friend of Greg). Peter and Andrew stayed and helped us clean up. It was so helpful!!!! Finally, the background of the right picture shows Uncle Bob, Matthew Bailey (big surprise!), Grandma Smith, Katie & Conner McKeown. Matt and Charlotte coming was a big surprise, too. They live in Oregon.

Dark Canyon

Here I am at the trailhead. Notice I am wearing my Hostinella shirt from Cathy. Always a dangerous/scary decision. :) Just kidding--sort of.

After 2-3 miles of flat desert, we came to a couple of areas where we down-climbed a bit. Then we came to the serious downhill! One vertical mile down. An ancient rock slide took away the sheer canyon wall and made it possible to pick your way down through the boulders. There's a trail of sorts. Cairns show the "easiest" way down. On the left here (above) is a pic looking down. And on the right is Jody down quite a ways towards the bottom.

This is one of my favorite pics. It is taken from the top and shows where we camped. If you look in the center of the pic you can see where a stream is flowing (you can't actually see the stream, but you can see the curve where the stream goes). That's Dark Canyon. Almost smack in the middle of the picture, in that river bed, you can see tiny, tiny trees. That's where we camped!

Pics of our camp. Definitely desert! Sheer canyon wall behind us. Stream in front of us. It was absolutely gorgeous!

OK, here's a couple of fun pictures. On the left you see me pumping water. Notice how hard I'm working. NOT! It's my new Platypus water purification system. You scoop up water into the "dirty" bag and using gravity it drains into the "clean" bag. You then use the clean bag as your bladder. Or you can just hold a Nalgene under the short hose attached to the "dirty" bag and let the water pour into your bottles that way. There's a little clamp to stop the flow when you don't want the water to come out. So whenever you want water you just have to pop the clamp and purified water pours out. No more pumping! On the right are sprouts. I took 2 sprouters with me and sprouted as I backpacked. It takes a lot of water, but with my new system that doesn't matter. It's easy--just a few minutes of care in the morning and in the evening. And then fresh greens for lunch every day! I mixed my sprouts with soy nuts, dried cherries and a few almonds and then tossed them with a little pouch of Italian dressing. Yum!

Just a couple of beautiful views taken of the area from our campsite. I love canyons, and I love desserts. The out- of-doors and camping and hiking recharge my aura!

Here are some photos of our day hike. Obviously me on the left. A pic of the stream we followed down to the Colorado River (we didn't go all the way) in the middle. Sometimes we were walking along the stream and other times we were way up above it. This is a way up photo, obviously. And then on the right is a fossil. Cool, huh? By the way--for those of you who aren't technological, you can click on these smaller pictures and a big one will pop up so you can see more details.

The left photo shows Jody and me heading out on our last day. The one on the right shows a scout troop coming down just as we were heading up. They look far away because they were way above us. If you can't see the boys, try clicking on the pic.

A sight for sore eyes. Way in the background you can see our car. Yeah! But then we still had the "treacherous" trip out that difficult dirt road! We were sure happy when we turned onto the asphalt highway!

Natural Bridges

This trip actually had 2 parts--camping and day hiking in Natural Bridges National Monument and then Backpacking down into Dark Canyon. Natural Bridges was first.



Here I am at our camp--just open BLM land. No "facilities." I'm wearing my new hiking skirt. I wasn't sure how practical it would end up being, but I loved it! It's a winner. I'm still loving my little Big Agnes tent and my Big Agnes integrated sleeping system. Equipment these days is unbelievable! I took this trip with my neighbor, Jody Barney. We were "alone together", meaning that we each had our own tents and food and pretty much took care of ourselves. We hiked together, but I also spent a fair amount of "alone" time reading and meditating and wandering. Camping and hiking simply infuses me with life!





















This was my first trip with my Kindle. It worked Great! No worries about reading too much and running out of what I brought. I finished "Outliers" which I had been half done with and then I started "The Magician" (and got 3/4 way through) .





















Here I am starting the descent into the canyon which has Sipapu Natural Bridge. My backpack is pretty cool in that I can take it apart and have a small backpack with a water bladder and also a fanny pack for 10 essentials and lunch.





















Here I am at Sipapu Natural Bridge. I love natural bridges. This was a neat hike because we got to walk under 3 of them. It was a 8 1/2 mile loop.
















Here I am at the second bridge, Kachina. All these bridges have Native American names, if you hadn't noticed. :) Originally "white men" named them President, Senator and Congressman, in order of height. then they were renamed Agusta, Caroline and Edwin by explorer groups. Finally the General Land Office assigned Hopi names (inspired by nearby Puebloan structures).


























Kacina has some cool petroglyphs. Here's an animal.






















And here's a human.





























Owachomo is the oldest of the three bridges. This view shows how narrow and thin it's getting. Remember last year one of the bridges at Arches collapsed? :( Owachomo is headed for that, but likely not in our lifetimes. You can see Jody in the corner of this pic--she's taking a picture.















Here I am at Owachomo

























And finally back at the parking lot. Then we headed off 2 hours to the Dark Canyon trailhead.