For Nick's birthday this year, we hiked to the very top of Mt. Timpanogas, and I got a half dozen blisters because I wore stupid hiking shoes instead of my running shoes. 11 miles later and I was ready to kill that stupid mountain. We left the girls at Grandma and Grandpa Skabelund's house for the weekend so we could hike it easier. Good thing we did, because I would not have like carrying them up on my back. That hike is pretty difficult.
This was just one of the really old, beautiful trees that we saw along the trail. I was determined to be in at least one of the days pictures, so I forced Nick to stop and take this picture.
This is where we stopped and ate our lunch. I was actually shivering by the time we got going again. It was a strange weather day. When we started out around 1pm it was pretty warm, but after about an hour it started to cloud over and rain. It stopped and we continued on in the sweltering heat. I was sweating to death, I swear. Then, we got up to the glacier crossings and I was cold and hot all at the same time. I kept taking my jacket on and off.
We had a new camera so I took a ton of photos just messing around. They turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. There were tons of beautiful waterfalls and flowers. My favorite picture was just after it stopped raining and I came across these leaves that were picture perfect.
There were so many gorgeous colors all along the trail. I just had to capture some of them.
It doesn't matter where we go, Nick is always looking for fossils. We stopped a million times so he could find some. I kept yelling back at him, "are you coming?"
About 3/4 of the way to the top, if you turn around you can see all the way back to Duck Lake and Heber Valley. It was so pretty that day.
Yes, another picture of Nick looking for fossils. We even took a half hour break so he could look more closely while he climbed half-way up the opposite mountain.
This is what I did to pass the time while Nick looked for fossils. My feet hurt and I couldn't figure out why the snow was pink up near the top of the glacier.
When we got to the top, we could look up and see some crazy college kids sliding all the way down from the top of this glacier on blow-up mattresses, intertubes and plastic bags. I thought they were insane because it was so steep, but they seemed to enjoy themselves.
This is us at the top right before we started the 5.5 miles back down. This is right before my blister really started to kill me. The picture below is how I felt about halfway down. My feet hurt and I wanted to cry, but I can always laugh at myself, so I took a stupid picture.
All in all, we hiked just over 11 miles, over snow, cement (the first mile of the trail is paved...dumb if you ask me), boulders, mud, glacier, stream and dirt. It was really fun to spend the day with just Nick. We actually got to have an adult conversation without having Madison or Emma interrupt us. We got down to the car at about 9pm and got home around 11:30pm. We were exhausted and a little sunburned.
