Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Up Up and Away

On Friday David took me for a ride in a hot air balloon in Park City. Are you jealous??? I thought so :) I got up at 4 (not easy for someone who's not a morning person) because we needed to be in Park City around 6. Dave was telling me for about a week and half that he had a surprise lined up. I must admit, I wasn't disappointed :) I had never been in a balloon before, so I was pretty excited.
Blowing up the balloon.

There were some other hot air balloons in the sky, but they were pretty lame. They didn't go nearly as high as we did. I'm glad I wasn't in one of those :)

If you look in the upper right hand corner, you can see our van. That's also where we took off.

There was a lot of haze in the air due to all the forest fires in the area.

The Uintas clouded in smoke.

So this is what it comes down to. David is awesome, and so is hot air ballooning. And I want one...

Not related to hot air ballooning: Michelle, Hailee, and I had to move out of our apartment because our contracts were up. While we were packing, Michelle came across all of her fun stuff from her three month stay in New Zealand. She misses NZ tons, so it made her a little sad when she had to go through it all. We decided that in order to cheer her up, we should play dress up :) It worked great I might add.

Mish and me in our NZ garb. The NZ islands are on our shirts in case you were wondering. We're also eating Tim Tam's ( the best cookies ever!). If anyone offers you a Tim Tam slam, do yourself a favor, do not object!

Saturday, August 08, 2009

The Uintas

I went camping this weekend in the Uintas with Hailee, Michelle, and David and his friends. We went up Thursday and set up camp and then walked around Trial Lake. The clouds were rolling in so we didn't stay out very long. I wish I would have had my camera with me while we were down there. On the North side of the lake there were these huge, dead trees that were standing in the water. The storm clouds were coming in, so the scary sky matched the dead trees. It looked really cool. I hate when I forget my camera at times like those! It would have been an awesome shot. It rained on and off, but nothing too bad. We made dinner and then played some songs on the guitar. We went to bed but it was freezing! As a result, I didn't get much sleep. On an interesting side note, I discovered that memory foam pillows turn into a block of concrete when it's cold :) I was a little worried I'd be too tired to function the next day, but I actually felt pretty good.

This is a sign to a nudist colony that we passed on our way up the canyon. The smaller sign says "Closed Due to Shrinkage" :)


We got up and went for a hike around the area the next morning. I think we passed six or seven lakes. It was so pretty! Everything was green and flowers were everywhere. It was pretty windy at the top, but we found some rocks to block the wind and stopped to eat lunch. I was surprised at how many people were up there. I guess they were trying to get one more camping trip in before school starts back up.

This is a shot of a little pond we passed on our hike. I had some better pictures, but I deleted them somehow.

After we got back to camp, Dave and I decided to go fishing at Trial Lake. I didn't have a fishing license, so we drove down to Kamas, and I bought a day pass. I wanted to get a year long pass but it was $80 for a non-resident :( Bummer... Kamas was about 35 minutes away from our campsite, but the drive was so pretty that I didn't mind at all. We fished at the lake for a couple of hours, but we didn't have much luck. We caught a few minnows, and I caught a trout, but just as I was pulling it out of the water, it got off the hook. Booo! I was looking forward to a fish dinner, but no such luck :( There were some albino fish in the lake, and I really wanted to catch one so I could show everyone how weird they looked. They were everywhere too. I guess they weren't that hungry though, because they just kept swimming around my line, but they wouldn't bite. I guess they were just too smart to fall for the old worm-on-the-hook trick.