Fabulous Orem Trip

VIEWER WARNING: This post contains pictures of venomous and non-venomous snakes.


Jon and I drove down to Orem on Thursday evening. On Friday morning we went to the Phillips family's 24th of July ward breakfast. After breakfast I asked Jon if he wanted to go hiking. Everyone wanted to go so we- Kaylene, David, Diana, Troy, Jon and I had a spontaneous trip to the back side of Timpanogos. We took a picnic lunch and after getting tickets for the 3:40 pm Timpanogos Cave tour drove up to Cascade Springs where we hiked around and ate a lovely lunch in the shade.

This is the back side of Timpanogos.

Here I'm standing in the parking lot of Cascade Springs with two important mountains behind me.

At Cascade Springs we saw our first reptile of the trip. We finished lunch and drove back to American Fork Canyon where Timpanogos Cave is. American Fork Canyon has very steep high walls with a river at the bottom. It is very stunning. There are seven different rock formations along the canyon ranging from dolomite to limestone to several types of quartzite.

We started hiking up the 1.5 mile trail at 2:00pm. The elevation gain of the trail was 1100 feet. (I was glad to have prepared by hiking a 2.8 miles on a flat trail the Saturday before.) The weather was also very agreeable.

We reached the top of the trail in 1 hr and 4 minutes. If I'd have known we were so close to the top, I would have pushed harder and got to the top in under an hour. EVERYONE we passed made comments about me being pregnant. The funniest was the two men that were obviously way out of shape but wouldn't allow a pregnant woman to pass them.

Amazingly, there was enough room in the 3:10pm tour for all six of us. We didn't have to wait the 4o minutes for our scheduled tour, but we didn't have time to eat any snacks. I later regretted this when we found out that there was no eating or drinking allowed in the caves. The tour was wonderful. There were three caves with really great formations in them, mostly the little potato stick shaped crystals that you see in the front of this photo.

This is the "Heart of Timpanogos."

The Phillips family has the Martineau family trait of preferring to be the last on the tour so they can have space and take pictures without being rushed.

This is a view of American Fork Canyon from the trail.

Jon's dad, David, found a rattlesnake minding his own business right next to the trail at the 1/2 way point. He waited for the rest of us to catch up to show us. In this picture the snake is slithering right for the pregnant picture taker. At some point the motherly fear factor set in and I backed away before the snake got any ideas.

We had a nice dinner at Jon's parents' house with everyone who hiked plus Kloe, Jessica, and Micah. The evening finale was watching Nacho Libre at Jessica and Micah's house.

On Saturday, Jessica and Kaylene hosted a baby shower for me at Jessica's house. The highlight was having ALL of my sisters and my mom there. We had a great time. Two of my college roommates came too. There are more pictures at my sisters blog.

Amy, Mandy, Bethany, Katrina, and Celeste (in front.)

The Pang family - Robin, Jun and Brook, Ling

In the afternoon we headed home. Jon had a sneaky plan. I knew he was up to something when we headed up Provo Canyon but didn't stop in Heber where some of my family were eating dinner. See pictures of their adventure here.

Jon took me to Park City. We had a $30 coupon from our car salesman for his family's really fancy Thai (spelling?) restaurant up at the Park City Ski Resort. There was a big Pioneer Day celebration going on at the resort and we walked around and watched people coming down the alpine slides and rock climbing, etc. We couldn't find the restaurant and drove around looking again. When we found it the sign on the door said "For Lease"! I laughed so hard. We only had the coupon for four months and the restaurant was already out of business.

After touring the outlet store mall parking lot, (this is a great way to window shop by the way) we ate at Arbey's and then drove along the Wasatch Back to Ogden and then home the usual way. While in Parley's Canyon we thought about the pioneers and what they would have seen when they went through the same place on their way to settle Salt Lake.