Oh no, I'm not falling for that again. If it doesn't have Siamese twins in a jar, it's not a fair!

Just a quick update before bed. For those waiting for the news, I am officially engaged now. We've had a date picked out for quite a while, but as of 3 weeks ago, it's official. here's my sapphire ring.

How'd he ask? Well, funny story. We drove out to Antelope Island with our bikes, parked at the end of the causeway, and went for a ride. The causeway is a really fun, really easy ride. The only catch is all the brine flies. I was not wearing an immodest shirt by any means - just a Ninja Turtle t-shirt - but still the flies flew down the neck and flew around in there until I pulled a Tarzan, pounded my chest, and killed them all. Blech!

Anyway, we rode the 7 miles to the entrance and the 7 miles back to the van. After I killed the new batch of flies, we drove to a rocky area where we took pictures with a group we camped with a few weeks before - the view of the sunset there is always breathtaking.

We climbed the rocks so we were far away from the other people and watched the sunset. Joe bent down to pretend to tie his shoe and came up with the ring. While I wasn't totally surprised (I tried it on 2 days before), it was still perfect for us. There we were, covered in sweat and dead bugs, watching the sunset on Antelope Island.

I said yes, and he pulled a dead brine fly out of my hair (no joke!). It was pretty great. :) We went to Chef Tom's and got some cheap but fantastic Italian - which is also us! What's wrong with cheap if it's delicious, right? Best alfredo ever! We stopped at FYE, looked for the absolute worst movie we could find, and watched Frogs at his house.

That's the story! I've just been busy shopping for a dress and reserving reception centers and whatnot since then. I'm still in favor of elopement, but, as Joe so rightly put it, "we need stuff." Hehe.

Other things going on? I joined Joe's family on a trip to Cedar City a week later to see the final weekend of the Shakespearean Festival. I'd never been before, and I loved it. We saw Winter's Tale on Friday night, then Dial M for Murder on Saturday (obviously not a Shakespeare, but I do love me a good Hitchcock script.). We had tons of fun!

This picture is from a hike we took in Kolob Canyon (which is technically a part of Zion National Park, but it's accessed somewhere funky and very few people know about it). Pretty, right?

One last picture for the road. This is my favorite engagement picture, taken 2 weeks before actually being engaged so's not to miss those leaves:

Yeah, I like Thai. Do you like shirt?

I've been collecting quite the conglomeration of good times, intending to blog about each one individually. In the interest of moving on with life and saving time, I'm just posting a few highlights.

August 19th and 20th - Grand Teton Relay! I was in van 2 with Jess, Josh, Kim, a high school friend of Jess's, and a younger brother of Josh's coworker, who DOMINATED the 10-mile leg. This is a picture of Josh ending our van's first leg and Jess picking up the second. This race worked exactly like a Ragnar. Not sure how weekend relay races work? Here's an enlightening video:



This race starts in Ashton, ID, and ends near Yellowstone, WY, taking the team all over the Grand Tetons.

I ran the 12th leg, which means I finished the race (boo-yah, Grandma!). I was also fortunate enough, at the end of our second set of legs, to hog the sunrise run. I was running up a mountain road, meaning I was cursing mountains, elevation, and the world in general. The sun rising over the peaks as I rounded the east side of the mountain was the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life. Too bad you'll have to take my word for it, because I wasn't running with my camera.

September 5th - Say one Labor Day you decide to go on your second favorite hike in the world, you take a wrong turn, and wind up facing the choice of either scrambling the jagged mountain edge or backtracking a couple of hours. What do you do? 1) You take the knife's edge. 2) You turn your second favorite hike in the world into your first favorite hike in the world. Seriously. My favorite part about the hike (taking the Red Pine trail and then climbing the Pfeifferhorn) in the first place was the rock scramble near the end. The fact that we extended the scramble and skipped the steepest part of the hike made it absolutely perfect. Sure, we were nervous about moving forward when we first realized we were on the wrong side of that mountain, but just look at Joe and Reba in this picture. So. Much. FUN! As for the picture on the left, there's our destination as seen from about halfway through our invented rock trail.

Those are the two big things. As far as hikes go, here are a couple of honorable mentions:

Twin Lakes (Up by Brighton and Silver Lake) - not a particularly difficult hike - it's steep, but it's also very short - but it's absolutely gorgeous.

Remember that snow storm in the mountains last weekend? Well, Joe and I took a little drive up Little Cottonwood canyon to scope it out. This is the bridge at the start of the Red and White Pine trails.

Wait for Me While I Play Catch-up, Play Catch-up

Well, this is embarrassing. I thought I'd been slacking off for a couple weeks, but it turns out it's been almost 2 months! Sadly, as I imported pictures from my camera earlier this evening, I discovered that my camera is more neglected than my blog. There's a 4-month gap between my most recent photos and my second most recent. I've been using my iPhone for pictures, but still! In the spirit of making up for my disappearance, here are a few updates, brought to you by some of the images I just loaded:

About a month ago, Joe and I hiked Broad's Fork again (we've done it three times now: once snowshoeing as friends - ha! And twice this summer). As I led the way back down the trail, I heard a rattle. And proceeded to bolt to the other side of the trail at speeds I never knew were possible, all the while asking, "What the heck IS that?!" I knew was it was (derp!). It's really hard to see the snake in this picture, but sadly, it's the best shot I have. It's towards the lower right corner. Actually, contrary to what it looks like in the picture, rattlesnakes are pretty big. I thought they'd be the size of a garter snake or something, but he was muchly much more bigger.

A couple weeks later (I guess this would be 2 weeks ago now), we hiked Grandeur Peak. It's definitely a new favorite hike of mine. The only thing there to slow us down? A rattlesnake. I kid you not, haha. I'd never seen one while hiking before, and now I've seen two within a couple weeks! This one was pretty boring compared to the first one; he just curled up under a bush by the trail and refused to let anyone pass without throwing a fit.

The filthy legs you see here are the aftermath of that hike.


This picture is about 5 months too late, but here I am, dominating Moab on President's Day. That's right - my Moab trip is the most recent thing on my camera besides Grandeur Peak and Broad's Fork. Can you say it with me? On the count of three. One, two, three: FAIL! Fail of epic proportions! To add to the glory of this huge exhibition of shameless slacking on my part, I'm going to go ahead and conclude my update here. Honestly, I'm keeping busy and enjoying the living crap out of my summer (not to mention life!), and yet I'm having issues thinking of things to blog about. So, on that note...

Until next time, suckas!