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 24
th 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.
Last night one of the sisters in our ward invited us over to get apricots from her tree. (The story is a little longer then that. I had noticed the apricot tree on a walk and called her to ask if we could pick some. The first thing she said when she answered the phone was "Want some apricots?" I thought it was pretty funny.) We brought them home and owing to their ripeness we immediately canned them using the steamer we got as a wedding gift. During the process we canned 14 jars and learned that you can pack the apricots in the jars more tightly then we initially thought. This morning we had apricot smoothies for breakfast. Mmmmm too much fiber.
This is the back side of Timpanogos.
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.
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.
Amy, Mandy, Bethany, Katrina, and Celeste (in front.)
The Pang family - Robin, Jun and Brook, Ling
Jon and I went to Idaho Falls for the July 4th weekend. We had a party for him there.
On Saturday, Jon, Amy, Brian and Carol had a cookout up Logan Canyon and drove to the Bear Lake overlook.