Wednesday hiking....

This week's hike was a short jaunt on the Desolation trail to the Salt Lake overlook. It's only couple of miles to the overlook, but of course in Wasatch hiking fashion it's up, up, up about 1250 feet. A pretty easy after work hike to a nice rock outcrop with a lovely view of the valley below. We had a botanical treat as well, lots and lots of Glacier Lilies along the trail!

Tulip Time

Saturday I headed down to Thanksgiving Point for their annual Tulip Festival. It was beautiful blue sky day, and tulip nirvana for sure. I'd say more, but I think the pictures speak for themselves!

Wednesday evening hiking!

You know you are awfully luckily when you can head out after work with a bunch of friends, and hike to the top of the world. Tonight's hike was to the Twin Peaks of the Avenues. It was rainy and overcast all day,but lucky for us the weather cleared and gave us a lovely hiking evening. It wasn't a long hike, but the 1000 foot elevation gain made it a little work to get to the top. The views made it all worth while, and I was thrilled to see my first Indian Paintbrush of the year. Hiking season is off to a great start.

The Dog Ate My Homework...

This seems like an apropos post for tax day, the day that millions of people are posting very important mail, their tax returns, and expecting said mail to be delivered.
But... the postal service isn't always perfect. Things do indeed get "lost in the mail". Not that I've had many problems with the post office, but there are occasional screw ups. A couple of weeks ago I found this in my mailbox... a returned letter... now get this, it was postmarked Nov. 30th 2009!!!! It's now 2012!!! It was addressed to my son's then landlord, and contained a rent check. I vaguely remember a time when I had to send a second rent check, because somehow the landlord had not not received my paynemt. I think I assumed they had misplaced it, or that perhaps I had done something totally flakey and not really sent it off, that I'd someday find it behind some furniture or under the car seat. It never did turn up though. Definitely a "dog ate my homework" sort of moment. What I am curious about is... where has this letter been for two and a half years?

Hiking again... with Cheeseburgers!

The 'view' of the valley from the top of Mount Van Cott.... yes, the valley floor is really out there a few thousand feet down. Yeah we must crazy to be out hiking in the rain!

Yes it's that time of year, hiking season. "Hiking Buddies" my hiking group from the pottery studio has started it weekly Wednesday night hikes. The days are not yet really long so we we picked an a quick and easy Cheeseburger Hike or tonight.

What is a Cheeseburger Hike you ask? Friends of my friend Susan started the Summit Cheeseburger website... a site devoted to, well, consuming cheeseburgers on mountain peaks of course. Susan, has been bagging cheeseburger peaks for a few years now, and initiated the rest of us last year. We figured the early season, with shorter days and too much snow high on the mountains would be a good time to 'cheeseburger' some of the lower local peaks. It turns out that cheeseburger are good motivators... I'm not sure if we would have been as excited to hike to the top of Mount Van Cott in the rain tonight if it weren't for the promise of a Cheeseburger Summit. If you want to read about tonight's adventure, here is my Cheesburger Summit write up for Mount Van Cott You can poke around and look at my hikes, or hikes by people all over the world! It's also a great repository for list of peaks all over the world.

Back to my roots

A fun little weekend diversion...A trip to Red Butte Gardens for Utah Orchid Society show. Lucky for me my friend and pottery instructor Dave was displaying his magnificent ceramic planters at the show and invited us pottery peeps to attend. Not that you can tell by ragtag collection of house plants, but once upon a time ago I got few degrees in botany, so I am great appreciator of interesting plants and plant diversity.

Everyone loves orchids, right? Ok...Nerd alert here... the Orchidaceae family is a huge plant family, one of the 2 largest families of plants, the other being the Asteraceae (daisies etc.) Being such a big family, it is not too surprising that there's a great diversity of flowers types and colors, but since we are most often exposed to the handful of orchid types commonly sold in department stores and garden centers the rarer specialty varieties on display at an Orchid show were really quite a treat. There were plenty of varieties I was not at all familiar with, with interesting flowers, amazing vibrant colors, and in some cases amazing fragrances. As you can see, it was quite a feast for the eyes!!!








Dave's marvelous planters. You can see some better pictures of his work here.