New Bike time!

Well, Karen finally talked me into it. I have been wanting to get a new bike for some time but couldn't come to spend the money since the ones I want are full suspension and quite pricey. But the other day we went to the local bike shop and looked at some and decided to just bite the bullet and get one for each of us. Some of the more expensive bikes can cost more than a small used car, I saw some in the bike shop for over $3000. I'm not sure if spending that much is going to make that big a difference for someone like me who just likes to ride on dirt roads and trails, but maybe for some really avid riders it might make sense. Needless to say we are looking at bikes well under that price tag.

I sure hope Karen is as much into bike riding as I am once she tries it, but we will have to drive some distance to get out of town far enough to find some back roads to ride on. I'll be down in Logan in the first part of June while Karen and Krista are in Alaska and I'll be riding my bike every day while I'm there so now I'll be riding the new one. Yippy!

Mountain Man Rendezvous

I had heard about these things from my friend Dan but had never been to one yet. It's kind of like a primitive flea market in a way. There were plenty of vendors selling all sorts of stuff and some of them were quite artistic and had some unique things for sale.


Many of the people who go to these things dress up in the garb of the day and as you walk around you get to see all sorts of different outfits. Curtis, Krista's husband, was wearing some stuff that Karen had made and he fit right in. The rest of us except Kayla who wore something different were the typical tourists with cameras and shorts.


We went there 2 days and Saturday it was nice but Sunday we got caught in a downpour and got drenched before we could get back to our vehicles.

It was a great experience even though we found out later that there had been an accident and one of the participants had been killed on Saturday night. I had no doubt that alcohol had to be involved since drinking was a big thing with most everyone there.

Jellystone

Well ok, we didn't see Yogi and Boo Boo but we did go to Yellowstone and spend a couple of nights in the historic Old Faithful Inn. That was quite a treat even though the room didn't have a bathroom and you had to walk down the hall to take a shower, it was still a great experience. This place opened to visitors in 1904 and the way it is built with unfinished logs made it a very special place. Since all the recent pictures I had seen of this Inn were during the fire suppression efforts in 1988, I was really interested to see how the forest has recovered in 20 years.
I was on those fires of 1988 but I never got to see this area since I was up in the Silver Gate, Cooke City area on the North East part of the park.


The weather on Monday when we left was really nice. It was in the 70's up at Mammoth and long sleeve shirts weren't necessary even though there was still a lot of snow in the higher country. Some people were complaining about the heat but Karen and I were enjoying every minute of it since it's been so cold this spring.



There were some roads and trails that were closed and they just happened to be places I wanted to see to, so that wasn't very good, but all in all this was a fabulous trip and the crowds were much less than they will be before long.

We took a different route home going down through Jackson Wyoming and by the Teton Range. That last picture was taken on the road to Jenny lake and those mountains down there were very impressive.

Warm at last!

Wow...

Today is supposed to be in the mid 80's and if it gets there I'll be loving it. Yesterday it was in the low 70's and we got some yard work done. Today we are getting on it early since we have church in the middle of the day and we still have lots to do. Tomorrow we're leaving for Yellowstone for a couple of days. We are staying in the old Yellowstone Lodge and that should really be a treat. I'll be posting some pictures when we get back. Things are greening up and blooming all over town and this place has a very different look than it did in the dead of winter. Not too bad if you like living in a big city!

Hiking in Logan Utah

Mothers Day found us in Logan Utah visiting Krista, Karen's daughter. They have a tradition of going on a hike on Mother's Day so Krista took us up the canyon behind Logan for a hike on the Crimson Trail. This trail climbs up out of the canyon and follows the top of a cliff and ends up down in a campground about 3 miles from the beginning. The limestone cliffs are quite precipitous but the trail is located well back from the edge most of the way. There were a few spots that gave Krista, who is afraid of heights, a scare as she walked by them.


The scenery was beautiful and it was a fairly nice early spring day with the flowers starting to bloom and the trees coming out. The creeks are running good with runoff from a good snow pack in the higher country. I'll be down here in a few weeks riding my bike on some trails while Karen and Krista are in Alaska, I can't wait!

In this last picture, Logan is out there at the end of the canyon and the river down there is the Logan River and looks quite fishy to me.

So we had a great time and had a fantastic day out in the wild, which was something I had been needing for some time now.

Idaho Falls in the spring

Karen and I took the boys for a walk along the greenbelt here in Idaho Falls. You can see the falls in these pictures. It was a nice looking day, not too cold but not nearly as warm as it looks. The river is running really high this time of year due to the runoff and the falls were booming. The last pictures I have taken here were of it frozen and barely running, so there is quite a contrast this time.



These pictures were taken last week but I'm only now getting to posting them. This was actually on my birthday that we went for this walk and since then the weather has been anything but nice. I hear they do warm up around here sometime but I haven't seen anything remotely considered to be warm yet this year. We have had frost warnings the last few nights and the wind has been really blowing making outdoor activities something you only do bundled up. I guess ya gotta love it, I just need to get used to it and I will.

Back from Zion!

Wow!!! What a fantastic place. We took around 400 pictures on our trip to Zion and I won't be posting them all on the net but I'll post a couple here and some more on my web album. If you haven't been to Zion, I'd highly recommend it as a high priority destination if you like the outdoors and like to hike. Once you have a campsite, and reservations are the way to go, there are shuttles that take you just about everywhere you want to go. The road going up the canyon is closed to private vehicles past a certain point and the shuttles are the only way to get there unless you walk or ride a bike. Since the shuttles are free, they are really the best way to go anyway. The bus drivers will give you information as you drive up the canyon and we found them to be very interesting.

Most of the trails are very well maintained like this one in the first picture going up the river walk. One of the main attractions in the park is at the end of the river walk going into the "Narrows." Unfortunately when we were there the Narrows were closed because of the high volume of snow melt and the Virgin River being much too deep and fast to allow access. At the trails end you have to end up walking in the river itself as it takes up all the space between the canyon walls, but since the flow was too much, we couldn't go there. We saw quite a few pictures at the visitors center and the Human History Museum of the Narrows and I was sorry we didn't get to see it since it looks very cool. We are planning another trip down there in October so hopefully we can get up there then.

The canyon walls are made from sandstone and the layering makes some very interesting patterns and I took many pictures of them for some strange reason. I guess I thought the angles of the layers looked pretty cool and I had to consider how they were formed.

Karen and I did this one hike up to a place called Angels Landing. It was marked "strenuous" in the park guide and I think she was dreading it until the day we did it. As it turned out she did great and made it all the way to the top with the greatest of ease as far as I was concerned. It was a good thing she isn't afraid of heights like some of her other family members are since the trail in places is very narrow and has chains to hold onto for safety as you can see in this picture. Both sides of this trail had sheer cliffs and you can see the road way down there to get a perspective of the heights involved.

I'll be posting some more pictures on my web album so if you want to see them, click here.

So Zion turned out to be a wonderful place to go and with the warm weather we had down there (temps in the high 80's) the week was very memorable. Being that this was also the first time I have ever "camped" in an RV, it was even more special in that respect and spending the week away with Karen made it the absolute BEST!