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.

Feelin' Campy - Like Karate Kid!

Earlier this month (the 4th through 7th to be precise), some of my family and I ventured on our I-can't-count-that-highth annual camping/fishing trip to Bridger Lake - the mystic waters of abundant planters! I defy you to spend an hour there and not catch your weight in puny, white rainbow trout. What made this trip special (among other things which I shall detail later), was that we invited Joe along. It was great spending time with him and getting him more acquainted with my wonderfully insane family.

As per tradition, the moment we arrived, we set up camp at a speed only possible for super humans, and hauled our fishing gear to the lake. This year, it started raining about an hour after we started fishing. This picture is of the lake during our first afternoon at Bridger Lake. We were soaked through pretty dang fast, so we pretty much froze the rest of the night (I was too stupid to change my socks before bed and wound up with really cold feet all night).

The second day was a blast, because after a morning of throwing our lines in Bridger and a hike (only Joe and I did that), Dad and Larie put their four-wheelers to good use, finding a lake with decent-sized trout that were actually native to the lake. All of us took turns riding the four-wheelers to that lake and fished there the second half of the day with some pretty good results. Most of our fishing time was spent there the rest of the trip. My favorite thing about Marsh Lake? Buster found this salamander in the weeds one morning. I'll not lie, once he showed me what he caught, I stole it and played with it for a ridiculous while before I even considered giving it back. It had so much energy! Sally was old and weak her last few years, so having to work to keep this salamander in my hands brought back some much older memories!

Some other fun moments of note:

Papa Gary teaching Chloe and Gaige to whittle - as he did for all of us when we were younger. Chloe asked me for whittling tools for her birthday next year.






Joe being silly whilst fishing at Marsh Lake.

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!