Hiking and fishing the Uintas

Another day, another great adventure.

I believe, but I'm not certain, that this is Little Lily Lake.

I had originally wanted to do a backpacking trip this week, but after not being able to find anyone else to go, decided on a longish day hike to some great fishing in the Uintas.

My plan was to go to Little Hidden Lake and Divide Lakes which are accessed via the Crystal Lake Trailhead.

I started off on the trail and the first thing I noticed was that neither of the trailheads that start from that parking lot had the name of the major lake in the area that I was planning on hiking to. I was looking for Clyde Lake to be on the sign because that's near the Divide Lakes, which are near Little Hidden Lake etc. I started up the trail not knowing where I was going really. I'm glad I didn't attempt it in the dark as I had originally planned. My Uinta maps are buried underneath tons of rubble in the basement (my daughter and her family live down there), and I didn't want to buy another one knowing that those were down there, so I just thought I could manage without. I did, but I ended up spending a lot of time traveling cross country and trying to figure out where the actual trail was and which lake was which. My GPS was helpful with that, but some of the smaller lakes weren't on my GPS map. I think part of my problem is that I get too involved in looking around, and miss the obvious trail.

I found myself looking down at Wall Lake where I had camped in the 1970s just after Christmas one year.

Anyway at about 7 am, I hit the trail,  heading up the right one and took a fork to Cliff Lake, which I remembered was along the path to Clyde.

Somehow though at Cliff, I got off the real trail (probably by looking around at the amazing scenery--and I was trying to find some wild roses in bloom for pics).

No wild roses, but there were flowers in abundance. These will have to do.

The area is so close to the highly popular Trial Lake Campground that there are trails heading everywhere and most of them vanish after a while, or turn into deer trails and peter out. Using the GPS, I determined where Clyde was from there and set off cross country to find it. Clyde Lake is beautiful and it looked highly fishable as I passed it by—I could see fish swimming and eating insects near the shore. But, I wanted to get to Little Hidden Lake, because the book I had read had said that there were some larger fish in it and it was excellent fishing. I had to pass by the three Divide Lakes in order to get to Little Hidden Lake, and there were some people camping there and I asked if they knew where Little Hidden was. One of them said, “yes” then pulled out his map and explained how to get there. What he actually showed me was "Hidden Lake". Nice guy. I found it a few minutes later with no problem. I had found another nearby lake which I assumed was "Little Hidden Lake", but now that I think about it, I'm fairly certain that "Hidden" and "Little Hidden" are the same lake. At any rate, there are many lakes up there and I wasn't able to positively identify all of them. The one I thought was Little Hidden Lake, may have been James Lake

I'm not sure if this is James Lake or what...

or one of the many other unidentified lakes that are found in the Uintas.

I decided to head back to the Divide Lakes.

Divide Lake 2

I ended up at Divide Lake 2 where I could see tons of fish eating bugs off the surface. I ended up catching six fish there, but didn't catch my first one until 1:15.

My first fish

After a while it seemed to slow down so I decided to try Divide 1 and caught one more fish. At about 3 pm, I thought I'd try Clyde Lake. The first spot I tried at Clyde I caught one, but that was it. So I decided to move. I went around the lake and saw a place where there were some old trees in the water, and some fish swimming nearby and sat there. I caught five more fish, bringing my total to 12 by about 4:30.  By the way, the fish in Clyde Lake are larger than the ones in Divide Lakes. I was fishing near the southwest corner of Clyde, right where the trail comes into it from below. There was a group of guys fishing along the south edge, stretching east who also seemed to be catching fish.

Clyde Lake close to where I caught five fish

My feet were hot. I decided to stick them in the lake.

Just one more reason to bring a bandana along--drying feet.

 Because of the trail situation, I had decided that I didn't want to attempt descending after dark, so I had made the decision to go down earlier while it was still quite light, and fish at Crystal Lake, which is near the trailhead.

Again, I was glad I made that choice because I got off the trail again when it vanished into some rocks. I heard some guys below though and thought that they were probably on the trail, so I waited until I could see where they were and started toward them. They were on the trail, and I talked to them for a couple of minutes. They weren't sure where they were either, so I told them where Clyde was etc. and they said, “good, we're on the right trail.”

I talked to an elderly couple further down the trail. They said they had come up to Clyde Lake 35 years previously and wanted to visit it again. I gave them general directions, mentioning that I had lost the trail up there, but showing them where it was up over which ridges and stuff. I'm pretty sure they weren't going up there to have a picnic, but it was kind of romantic anyway.

When I got to Crystal Lake I had some memories flood back because I had been a Scout leader several years (10 maybe) ago when I had last been there. I looked for the lean-to the boys had made, but couldn't even find the right spot. I didn't spend a great deal of time looking though, because I wanted to get fishing. The waves were choppy because a breezed had kicked up and one thing I'd noticed at some of the other lakes I'd fished was that when the wind was blowing, the fish didn't want to bite as much. I ended up catching one, making my total 13, but that one was different from all the others. It was an Arctic Grayling—the rest had been trout—and that beast really fought me. It jumped out of the water three times as I reeled it in. Of course, I was doing catch and release, so I let the fighter go to live another day.

Arctic Grayling. He's the fighter!

As for the day itself, it was beautiful. The sky, however, was a bit murky due to all the forest fires in California, Nevada, Oregon, etc. We always get that smoke trapped in our mountains for a while. There were no clouds in the sky, and I was treated to a rare Uinta day that didn't include an early afternoon rain storm. I really enjoyed listening as the breeze came through the trees. It's interesting how you can hear it coming from a long way off, before a particular blast reaches where you are. That's an amazing thing about being in the forest. The temperatures were nice, though I got a little cool sitting in the shade at Clyde--I also got a little hot in the early evening sun at Crystal.

Never leave your hip belt buckled for pics...it always makes you look like you have a pot belly.

I ended up leaving at around seven, stopped in Kamas and got a personal pizza, and began the drive home, arriving at around nine. Just another great adventure in the wilderness. I couldn't be happier.

Uintas fly fishing

I just learned the "surgeon's knot" today. This is the knot that allows you to tie a tippet onto the leader of you fly line. My dad had taught me the old-fashioned way when he was teaching me how to fly fish about twenty years ago. "Take it down to the shop at Sportsmen's Warehouse and they'll tie it on for you."
After learning the surgeon's knot, I have no idea why he didn't teach me that. It was very easy to learn and will save me lots of time going to Sportsmen's--even though there are a lot of great reasons to go there. I was there earlier today picking up some bubbles,  the tippet line and some new leaders, and halfway thought about just bringing in the reel and having them tie it on. But I figured, it was time I learned something new.
I just typed it in in Google, and within fifteen minutes, five really, I had it mastered.
Now, I'd like to learn both the handshake and nail knots, but I don't need them yet. They both also look fairly simple to master.
Tomorrow, I go fishing up to Divide Lakes and  Little Hidden Lake in the Uintas. I'm taking both the fly rod and the spin rod. If one's not working, I'll try the other. In either case, the fishing ought to be great. Even if I catch nothing but beautiful vistas.

Another beautiful sunrise

There are homes all around mine, but I was able to capture part of a beautiful sunrise, just by going around the block and finding a more open spot. Not perfect, but you get the idea:

Yeah, it was amazing! I hope wherever you are, you got to see something like this today.

The mysterious ways of weight loss

This past week I fluctuated between 187 and 186.5. It's the first time in years that I've been below 187 at all, so I was pumped. The funny thing is, now I'm very conscious of the things I'm putting in my body. I'm wanting to reach my goal of 185, but it seems that I may be able to do even better. That being said, we who have weight-loss goals would do well to keep a couple of things in mind. The first is that there are nearly always daily fluctuations in weight. Most of those are due to water intake (or lack thereof). I have found myself in this process doing the two step forward, one step back kind of thing. It's to be expected. What needs to be considered is the overall trend, not the day to day weight.
The second thing to consider is that we should be focusing more on fat loss instead of weight loss. I think this is where one of my pet peeves comes into play, and that's the height to weight ratio tables that are used to compute your overall health. Body Mass Index measurements are really a false way of figuring out overall health. The reason being that someone who is heavily muscled will have a higher weight to height ratio than someone who does no strength training. I personally do a bit of strength training and have larger muscle mass than say, a skinny guy who never does body weight exercises, but who may be way out of shape because of no exercise to speak of. A far better way to indicate health is through body fat percentage, coupled with resting heart rate, blood pressure, and a few other indicators.
That being said, the most important thing is that we are out there doing something to improve our health. Whether it's giving up soft drinks, or stopping by the gym, we can all do something. Make it a goal and start today.

Going green: The EPA, Animas River, and Ikea

On August 5th, the EPA inadvertently released over a million gallons of contaminated mine water into the Animas River, causing the PH to lower, threatening fish and other wildlife--in addition to farmers--all along the waterway which eventually flows into the San Juan River and the Colorado.
The EPA during the Obama Administration has been a bunch of clowns who are basically dictating, with no Congressional approval, a plethora of strict regulations designed to protect the environment. These folks tour the country looking for someone to fine for undue greenhouse emissions or other "violations" of greenhood. Prior to this incident, they've potentially caused billions of dollars in job loss for thousands of people by restricting development of fossil fuels etc. Now, they are causing perhaps millions of dollars in loss of income for people who depend upon the Animas and the San Juan for their livings, including many miles of the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo Nation is understandably, up in arms.

We cannot fine them--it would just come out of the tax payer's pockets. The cost for the cleanup alone will be in the millions, if not billions, of dollars. So what can be done to punish those responsible for this potential ecological disaster? Fire them. Since they get their marching orders from the man at the top--President Obama--he should be fired too. Corrupt crooks only understand one thing and that's losing their jobs over the mistakes they've made.
So what does this have to do with Ikea. Not much except for the hypocrisy behind the "green" movement. Ikea, which doesn't even provide shopping bags that you can take home with you (unless you purchase one), in the name of keeping plastic grocery bags out of the landfill, sends out millions of half inch thick catalogs each year. For the amount of paper used in the creation of these things, they would have to kill an entire forest. Now that's really being green.
I'm all for protecting the environment, but there needs to be some kind of balance. People's lives  and livelihoods shouldn't be compromised in sketchy schemes that supposedly will stop global warming.

Fields of Gold

We'll walk in fields of gold...

Another amazing song...

Fire and Rain

One of the greatest songs ever. James Taylor and Fire and Rain:












I've always loved this song.

Parking strip...Done!

We have just completed one of our largest summer projects. We wanted to redo our parking strip because parking strips are rather useless and difficult to water. Here's what it looked like halfway through the excavation project:

After many hours of back breaking work, including several trips to the dump, and moving tons of rock, here is the result:

From the same spot as the partial excavation above.

From the opposite end

We think it came out pretty nice. Now if we can keep the grandkids and the neighbor kids from moving the rocks around (hint, we've already had trouble with this), we have one project that is completed and won't have to be done again. That's always a good thing.

My personal fitness challenge

I'm still on my way to get down to 185. Originally I had the goal of doing so by July 4th, but my wife's hospitalization, my own bouts with diverticulitis, and a few other roadblocks delayed my attempt. However, the past two days that I've weighed myself, I've been at 187.5, and 188. That would be on Thursday and today--Saturday. It's the first time that's happened in this attempt. Of course, that could possibly have something to do with getting my haircut. Even though I just got it trimmed a bit, I've been known to lose a pound or two after a haircut in the past. Maybe that's why I gained a pound between Thursday and Saturday. Or, it could have been the buffet we went to last night.

Albion Basin hike

For at least half of my 56 years, I've heard tales of the wildflowers in Albion Basin. For whatever reason, I had never hiked there. I don't know if it was because it seemed like too short of a hike for me, or what, but after shoveling rocks for hours to finish my parking strip on Monday and Tuesday, what I needed was a short hike.
I got up there early for a couple of reasons. First, I'd heard that the parking lots get full. I'm not one to dawdle about getting up before others to stake my claim to a good parking spot. Second, the best photos are usually shot in early morning light or early evening light, and that was my main objective--to get some good pics of some of the legendary wildflowers. I was not disappointed in the flowers and I hope you're not disappointed in the pics.
There were four or five cars in the parking lot when I arrived. So far, so good.
The hike itself took me through a large chunk of Alta ski resort. I got to see most of the runs I'd gone on during the past winter, including the spot where my brother, Mike had been standing on level ground and had fallen. That was still funny, just thinking about it.
The main trail begins at the parking lot at the end of the road in Little Cottonwood Canyon and heads basically south from there. You can eventually wind up at Cecret Lake if you take this trail, though there are trails going everywhere up there. I took a fork in the trail heading east, winding my way up toward the cliffs. Along this trail I saw no one. But there were still plenty of flowers to see along the way.
This trail eventually heads north and I suppose if I had continued on it, I would have connected with the trail to Catherine Pass and been able to look down into Brighton.
Anyway, let's start with some of the pics.

I thought this would make a great jigsaw puzzle.

I had told Ann that there was still some snow left and I found it.

I decided to make a snow angel, but it was solid ice.

And this one would make a great puzzle too. Very challenging.

More snow pockets, way up high.

Lupines

It was very crowded as I wound my way back to the fork in the trail. I still had some time left, so I decided I'd check out Cecret Lake since I had never been there. Here's a pic of the lake.

The parking lot was full and other cars were driving around waiting for someone to leave when I returned to the 4runner. As soon as I left my spot was filled. It had been a nice hike and one that I'd remember for a long time. And I found a place or two for a nice picnic.

Rockport artifacts

On July 8th, I went fishing to Rockport Reservoir. The low water revealed in the area where I was fishing, some old foundations and some interesting artifacts. I picked up a couple of things, which I'm trying to identify. The first was this round object marked with the letter "T":

And then there was part of a broken bottle that looked like this:

If any of you antique experts out there have any ideas on what these are exactly, feel free to clue me in.

The Fireworks Fizzle

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I won a drawing for a huge package of fireworks. I was very excited to finally break into them and put on a show for the family who were going to come over for the 24th...a state holiday in Utah honoring Utah's pioneer heritage.
We had a fun time with our dinner and visiting, though if  I did it again, I'd bag the idea of using pre-made boxed hamburger patties, and use fresh ground beef to make our own patties. Those from that box tasted like cardboard. All the other food was good though, and we topped it off with our first attempt at home-made chocolate peanut butter gelato, along with tried and true vanilla ice cream in the hand-crank ice cream maker.
Then came time for the fireworks display. I could tell that many of the items in the package were fountains, but as I got further into it, I found that there wasn't a single firework in the entire package (suggested retail value $1000) that shot up into the air. Now some fountains can be cool, but they can get boring after a while. I should've realized it and figured it out sooner, only I kept believing that amongst this huge package, at least some of them would shoot into the sky. Unfortunately no. We shot off about half the package before everyone got bored...the grandkids had stopped watching at least twenty minutes before the end and had begun chasing each other around the yard. Several other people in the crowd were watching the sky rockets being shot off in the neighborhood, instead of the fountains in front of our house. Still I had to remind myself that I hadn't spent a dime on these things, and that those people who kept shooting things up in the air had spent a bunch of money to do it. It was a small consolation, but I learned that bright packaging doesn't mean that it's all it's cracked up to be.
So, I have half of them left. I can't think of a time when I'm going to want to watch a bunch of fountains. I'm thinking of selling them on KSL in the next day or two. And then I'll buy with the proceeds, at least one firework that will shoot up into the air and go "boom", for New Year's Eve.
All in all though it was great to be with my family members and have them all able to come. That's a rarity these days and I'm extremely grateful for it.

You know, some days are just better than others...

Yesterday (Tuesday) ended up being a comedy of errors of epic proportions. It wasn't the worst day ever. It just ended up being much less than I had hoped, on many fronts.
It began well. Or kind of well. It was my day off and I needed to go help my son Sam at 8:00 with a ride over to the tire repair place, so I decided to get up early and get to the gym. For whatever reason, I didn't get out the door until nearly 6:40 and I knew that would not be enough time to complete my entire workout and make it to help Sam at 8. I ended up shortening the workout. That never pleases me. I figure if  I made the effort to go at all, I should do a complete workout. But at least I got some exercise in, so not a bad start.
I made it to Sam's apartment complex just after 8, where we discovered that his spare wasn't flat after all (as he'd thought), and so we removed the flat tire, put the spare on, and I followed him to Discount Tire. No problems there.
I went home and began looking up places to buy decorative rock for landscaping. I had finished digging out the parking strip on Saturday, and so I was anxious to get the job completed. I found out that the place where we bought the specific rocks that we used a couple of years ago to redo our parking strip at our old house was out of business. After finding out that the place I'd gotten them before was out of business,  I began to search for places that carried the same kind of rock. I narrowed in on a place in Magna and wrote down the address along with a couple of other possible vendors.
Next on the agenda was that both Ann and I needed haircuts. I dropped her off at Fantastic Sam's where she had gotten a quality haircut the last time she got it cut, while I headed across the street to a new barbershop/salon that was over there. It was 10:10 by this time, but when I arrived at the place on the other side of the street, even though their sign said that their hours began at 10, there wasn't a single soul inside the locked place. I thought about going down the street a few blocks to another place I knew of, but thought that Ann would be done way before me if I did so and wouldn't know where I was, so I headed back to Fantastic Sam's to wait for her. I sat there in the 4runner, looking at a coupon book until 10:30. At that time, she finally appeared at the door, so I went in, only to find that she's struck up a friendship with a couple of old ladies, one on oxygen, and was just waiting to hold the door open for them. When I came in and found out that she hadn't had her haircut yet (because they were calling her back at that time to get it started), she said that I could hold the door open for the ladies. I was more than happy to do so, but I stood their looking dumb for about five minutes while one of the ladies looked for a punch card or something in her purse. Finally I went outside and stood, thinking that when they made it to the door, I could pull it open from the outside, which is what I did.
After that, I wandered up and down the strip mall, then climbed back into the 4runner and started reading the coupon book. It actually looked like there was quite a few great places with coupons that we should try. I was looking forward to later in the day driving up to Tremonton and having lunch--after the haircuts and rocks. The place we were heading for wasn't one of the coupon places, but some place I had bought a hot fudge shake at once on a drive down from Idaho--and I had remembered that shake with fondness.
When Ann got done and came out, I told her about not getting my haircut, and she told me that since I had planned on stopping home to change shirts (I can't stand the itchiness of the cut hairs that get inside my shirts), she had not used the restroom and would need to stop somewhere. I had thought I would stop at that second hair cutting place, but instead headed further up the road to the library, a place with a restroom. When she came out, we backtracked to the hair cutting place, called "Authentic Cuts". I went inside while Ann waited outside in the car. There was one barber. There was a guy getting his hair cut, and a teenager waiting. I sat and watched the barber and his customer, heavily involved in a conversation, and the barber shaving the guy's neck, up and down, up and down for about five minutes. I never knew it could take that long to shave a neck. I knew then that the barber wanted to continue the conversation with the customer and was trying to delay finishing. I left. "Let's go see if we can find rocks," I said.
We drove to the vicinity of the first one on my list (in Magna), the one that supposedly had rocks that looked like the ones we had purchased the last time. The address took us to a neighborhood, not some kind of lot with rocks piled around that we could look at. Frustrated, we headed to the second place on the list, which was over in West Jordan. We looked over their rocks, and found something that I thought would work, but Ann wasn't convinced. She wanted the same rocks as before. So we left there and headed to the last one on our list, over in Murray.
You know it's kind of frustrating when people don't update their websites. This place was listed as being at 141 W. Vine Street. It's Staker-Parsons, which is a pretty big name in sand and gravel/ landscaping etc. What was at that approximate address was the parking lot for the Murray Trax station, light rail parking, that had been in that location for at least ten years. Why not update your freaking website?
We decided to go back to the house, eat some lunch, do more research on the rocks. I found only one other name, and when I checked it out, it led back to the one that was in a residential area. This time I called on the phone, then texted, to see if I could figure out where this rock place actually was. I was tired and had a headache after all of this, so I decided to lie down and take a nap. I had just fallen deeply into sleep when the phone rang. It was the guy at the rock place. He said that he ran the business out of his house, but that the landscaping rocks were in various areas around the house so I could go and look in his yard to see if I liked any of them. Ann and I decided that we could do that on the way to Tremonton, so once again, we headed to Magna.
After a little searching, we finally found the street, Moon Beam Bay Drive, and the house. We found that they had the kind of rocks we wanted. I called to place an order with the guy, but got his voice mail. I left a message and then we headed up to Tremonton.
We had gotten to such a late start that we were now in rush hour traffic, headed north toward Ogden and beyond. It took us a while, but we finally got to Tremonton, and the drive-in called Mack's that I had been anxious to go back to.
The food wasn't bad, but when we ordered the ice cream afterward, we were disappointed. I ordered a hot fudge shake and Ann had an ice cream cone. The shake wasn't mixed well, and it wasn't hot fudge that the girl mixed in--some kind of chocolate, but not hot fudge. Definitely not as good as last year when we stopped there on the way back from Salmon, Idaho.
Our dinner done, we began the drive back home. The sun was getting low and I was trying to make it to a place that I knew of that is kind of an overlook of the Great Salt Lake. But the sun was setting faster than we were getting there. Ann asked me to get off the freeway and take a picture, but the freeway was about thirty feet higher than the surrounding terrain and I didn't think I could find a high enough spot in those lowlands to get a shot of the sky. I kept trying to get the the overlook, but the sun was going down. I finally pulled off and began looking for a place to take a picture. There was a railroad overpass (no parking on top of course), and we drove down the western side of it and I tried to hurry back up to the top to get a shot, but the moment was gone. "I told you you should have gotten off the freeway earlier," Ann said.
She was right. The guy never called back a second time, and I've texted and called him today with no response. I hope he's just busy and will soon call me back, because he had quite a few good reviews on ksl.com. All in all yesterday was a weird and unproductive day, I didn't hate it, but it wasn't one to write down in the memory books. Good thing there are other days.

New recipe

I just made this new recipe: Bangin' Blueberry Coffee Cake
I had a bunch of extra blueberries to use up after stocking up on them at a recent sale. I had already made some blueberry muffins, and Ann had already made a great pie. I had used them on my cereal in the morning. They would begin to go bad soon, so it was time to use up the rest. A few minutes ago I tasted the cake and it was great. It was like eating To Die For Blueberry Muffins in a cake pan, maybe even better since it was coffee cake and not muffins. So the next time you have some blueberries to use up, try the coffee cake--or the muffins. Whichever one you're in the mood for.

Sunset hike to the Salt Lake Overlook

I needed a hike during my vacation week, which was a stay-cation. I had canceled my hike on Thursday morning, so that I could do some other things that needed doing, but I didn't want my entire vacation to go buy without getting at least one hike in. I decided to try an evening hike to try to catch a spectacular sunset and get some pics. I got off to a later start then I'd wanted. The trail to the Salt Lake Overlook begins up Millcreek Canyon, just east of the Millcreek Inn. There is a trailhead parking lot for the Desolation Trail there. That parking lot and any other bare spot around for a quarter of a mile, was filled with cars. There was a wedding reception at the Millcreek Inn, and the parking for that place itself has only about ten spots, so obviously guests were parking in the trailhead parking lot and everywhere else. I tried driving up the canyon and the only available spot was about half a mile further up. I tried down below and found a spot a quarter of a mile away, but I'd be walking downhill on the way back so it wasn't a bad option.
I started hiking at about 7:15 and made it up to the Overlook by about 8:40. The sun was getting close to the horizon and there were some clouds so I thought it might be possible to get a nice shot. One thing I found out though was that the sun was too far north and would be going down behind a nearby mountain instead of Stansbury Island out in the Great Salt Lake, so a little later in the summer is probably the prime time to take this hike for sunset purposes. Still, even though the sun wasn't where I would've liked it, and the sunset itself wasn't one of those truly amazing spectacles that we all hope to capture with our cameras, I think I got a few pretty decent pics. Here's the one that I liked the best of all that I took:

You can see how it was going down behind the nearby mountain.

I thought I'd hang around a bit and see if I could get a picture of the city lights coming on down below and ended up with this:

Salt Lake lights at dusk

There were some other people up there with me, some teen girls (sisters and friends) and a woman who was mother to at least one of the girls. I left them up at the top and headed down. I strapped on my headlamp and as I walked down the trail, I saw a small speck of flashing green light on the trail. At first, I thought someone had dropped some kind of electronic device on the trail, but as I neared the light I found out that it wasn't anything man-made at all, but my light was reflecting from the eyes of a spider! That was awesome! I found out that the flickering was caused by my movement, not anything to do with the spider's eyes. After that, I saw numerous green flashes on the trail and every time, it was a spider. Once I saw a larger white light down the trail and thought someone with a flashlight was coming up, but that ended up being a bird sitting on the trail whose eyes reflected the light from my headlamp. That was awesome too!
The party at the Millcreek Inn was still happening, as there was a cover band doing all kinds of familiar songs as I approached the bottom of the trail. I was ready to rock out and listened to some hard rock on KBER as I drove home in the cool night air. I turned it down as I rolled into the neighborhood and pulled into the driveway just before 11:00.

"56"

I just turned 56 yesterday. There's one thing I can't stand about that, and that's having to plug my age in as 56 on the treadmill that I run on instead of 55. Each year I dislike that--having to increase my age by one year. I'm kind of funny that way. There was one advantage and that is that I was at the youngest I could possibly be in my age category in the recently run 5k. I was probably the oldest 55 year old, but at least I was at the bottom end of the range, which was 55-59. The only way I could have been personally one of real youngest is to have been born on July 3rd, and having just turned 55 the day before the race. As it was, I turned 55 361 days before the race. I wish my parents would have planned better for my birth...
Another thing I don't like about turning 56 is the life expectancy analysis at Blue Zones. Blue Zones is based off of a book in which unusually high populations of centenarians are examined by teams of scientists and medical professionals to find out why they live so long. They have a "How Long Will You Live?" calculator and among the other results it give is a category called "Your healthy life expectancy". Guess what my healthy life expectancy turns out to be according to their calculations? Yep. You guessed it. 56. Now, I know that's a crock, but I keep wondering why they came to that conclusion. They don't even know about my diverticulitis. They didn't even ask about my genetic history. I wonder what they base that on. Of course, my plan is to prove that wrong.
All that being said, I did something fun yesterday. I went fishing at Rockport. I didn't catch a thing, but in my book, you don't have to catch anything in order to have a good time.

The fishing was poor, but it was nice up there anyway.

 The water was really low, and where I was, there were remnants of old bottles, building foundations etc., that had once been underwater. I looked around for a few minutes, hoping to find an antique bottle still intact, but no such luck. I did find the bottom of a rectangular bottle that had to have been pretty old, and another object that was like some kind of a bottle cap marked with a  "T". I'll be posting some pics of those objects in my next blog entry to see if anyone knows what they are.

Another song I like

I've had this old Carpenter's song, Superstar running through my head lately. Funny, I only remembered the first couple of lines: "Long ago, and oh so far away, I fell in love with you before the second show," and the chorus: "Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby?" So now, after reading the actual full lyrics, I find it's about a groupie. Ha ha! I liked thinking about it the other way--as a real love song. Karen Carpenter had a wonderful voice. Anyway, I still like the song and here it is:

Weekend Booty

So far, over the weekend, I won the drawing for the huge package of fireworks from one of our local grocery stores, Reams, and finished second in my age category in the Sandy 5k on the 4th, earning a medal. Quite a haul for one weekend.
All the fireworks prize took was to enter and luckily have my name drawn out. It's a great prize, and I'm excited to use it. I didn't use it on Independence Day because not all of my children and grandchildren could come over, but there's a little Utah holiday called "Pioneer Day" on July 24th. That's when that big package of fireworks will be lit.
I was even more excited about reaching my goal of finishing in the top five in my age group for the 5k. I finished second in my group, which is actually my highest ever in any of the particular age groups I've been in throughout my history of running 5ks. That didn't represent luck. Well, not that much any way. It's possible that only two people entered in my age group. In that case, I also was last place in my group. I don't think that happened though. I saw quite a few men who looked like they might be around my age.
The thing that makes the 5k different from the fireworks is that one required effort and practice, and the other required giving myself the opportunity to win by entering. Of course, if I wouldn't have entered the race, I wouldn't have finished second in my group, but it required a bit more than that. It required training  and to keep running even when I felt like stopping after a couple of miles. It also required a God-given sound body, and a desire to remain strong and healthy in order to continue to do the things I love to do throughout my life.
The bottom line is, when you win something because of the work you've put into it, it's much more rewarding than winning something by chance.

Here's a quickly thrown together picture of me and my weekend winnings.

Here is an outtake video. This one was made by mistake when my son-in-law, Justin, was figuring out the camera settings. Watch it for humor if nothing else. Also, unseen on any of the pics or video was the firework box toppling toward Justin (who was sitting on the floor trying to get a good pic). He was having trouble with the camera and as I moved forward to assist, suddenly the box fell directly toward him. It is not a  light box and would've hurt to have it land on him. As luck would have it, or divine intervention, my music stand was pushed aside right there and took the entire weight of the falling fireworks, saving Justin in the process. I couldn't quite catch it myself, as I'm not really Captain America.

My personal fitness challenge

Remember a few weeks ago when I started my personal fitness challenge of being down to 185 pounds by July 1st? You probably also remember all the setbacks I've had during that time. Still, I think I started at 192 and I'm now down to 188. That's a loss of four pounds in two months...not great, but considering all the illnesses for both Ann and I, it's definitely progress. Now, I'll be shooting for mid-August to lose the rest. Wish me luck!

Adventure

A few days ago, I ate lunch at the Szechuan Express in Taylorsville. I ordered the garlic chicken and it was very good. I had driven past it many times and never eaten there in all of those years. The fortune in the fortune cookie said it all: “Adventure can be real happiness.”

I'm always up for an adventure. Adventures don't always turn out happy, but they are always interesting. Sometimes adventures are challenging. They tax us to our limits—mold our character, build our courage, and turn us into someone who is just a little bit different than we were before we embarked on the journey.

Adventure is part of life. There are two major ways we can approach adventure. The first is to try to have as little of it as possible. Sit down, don't move, never follow any urges or promptings, never do anything fun because it could possibly end in adventurous disaster.

The second approach is the way I prefer. And that's to embrace adventure with confidence and with curiosity. The great explorers all had this way about them. Accomplishment follows in the wake of this approach. Disaster can loom as well, but great adventurers learn to cope with disaster or die in the attempt.

I think of life as an adventure and always have. Though there are perils involved in life's adventures, those who learn to embrace them also open themselves up for a great deal of happiness. Like the fortune cookie said, “Adventure can be real happiness.” It can, and my take is that without it, you never truly find the happiness you seek. Embrace it.

Put this drug on your list of don't take it unless you have to

Metronidazole...one of the two antibiotics given for the relief of diverticulitis (the other being ciprofloxacin) . This drug is the one that has been making me sick to my stomach. I just took the last one. Another side effect of this drug is a sour taste in the mouth, accompanied by breath bad enough to knock a buzzard off a manure wagon. There are other side effects I don't care to discuss.

I'm so thankful that it's over.

Fitness? I'm still trying

I just ran a trial 5k on a treadmill and my time was 27:42. That's my fastest time in over a year. I've been sick with diverticulitis and the antibiotics that I'm taking to fight it, so that's saying a lot about my overall fitness level. My actual race is on the Fourth of July and I will have been off the drugs for five days--my last ones are tomorrow.
As I neared the end of my run today I remembered something about one of the drug's side effects. Cipro is one of the drugs and I remembered that one of the side effects is to more easily pull a muscle. I could feel one going in my right calf, but wanted to complete the trial run, so I pushed on. It's a bit sore, but it will mend, and since I'm going to be tapering off in preparation for the race, I don't anticipate any problems by race day.
I guess the bottom line is that if you're trying to stay fit, push on through temporary pain with lighter workouts and you can pretty much maintain a base line level of fitness. Then, when the opportunities arise--like today for me--see what you can do. You may surprise yourself.

On being aware

On Monday, I was out delivering my mail and I saw a vehicle pulled over to the side of the road with its flashers on. It was very odd because it had only managed to get within about four feet of the curb, and there was someone inside. Also, it was in a neighborhood, not along some highway. I passed the vehicle and delivered to the next two houses, then decided to go back and check on the person in the van.
I looked inside and the guy in there did not look well. I tapped on the window. Groggily and staggeringly slow, he reached for the button to roll down the window. I asked him if he was okay--if he needed help. He was nearly incoherent in his response, but I made out that he'd been drinking the night before.
Here it was nearly ten o'clock, the temperatures already in the low eighties, and with his windows rolled up. If this man stayed here asleep during the heat of the day, he was going to die.
He looked like he was about to vomit on me, so I left him and drove up the street, did a few more deliveries, then stopped and made the phone call to the police. Either this guy was going to die, or he was going to try and drive, perhaps endangering others. I noticed a few minutes later that the police had arrived, and soon thereafter, paramedics and a fire truck.
It would have been nice for someone in that neighborhood to have been the ones to make the call, but I was probably the right person at the right time. I guess the moral of the story is to be aware of strange events in your communities and don't be afraid to report them. You may save someone's life. I don't know for sure if this man would have died, but it was the right thing to do--to report it.

Blasts from the past

I just had my second bout of diverticulitis, my first coming just a little over a month and a half ago. I'm not thrilled about being back on antibiotics. They make me sick. On the other hand, I'm not to keen on having to have part of my colon removed if it abscesses and walls off. I'd rather take the antibiotics and hope and pray that they work this time. Sometimes, these blasts from the past aren't good. I hope this is my last blast of diverticulitis ever.
That being said, the good Lord watches over us and I'm confident that I will mend and mend well. There is just too much to do to be under the weather for long. Besides, the drugs are doing their stuff and other than a little queasiness now and then, I'm feeling good and was able to do a lot of yard clean up yesterday, including discovering that my one blackberry plant I had thought was dead, had sent up new shoots--so I watered it, cleared away the Virginia Creeper that invades from over the fence and felt good about the whole darn thing.

Your Song

Elton John's Your Song is one of my favorite songs of all time. Here's an early version of it performed by a young Elton John in 1970.

Lake Blanche hike

I had the opportunity of hiking up to Lake Blanche, high in Utah's Wasatch Mountains yesterday. I've been there several times in the past, but this time I wanted to take my fishing pole. I had always seen fish jumping in the lake and it looked like a great opportunity to catch some trout.
Sadly, last year my telescoping rod had broken, so I had to take my two-piece rod with me, but it strapped on nicely to my day pack so it was no problem.
I started hiking at around 5:30 am. I was hoping to get some good pics of the sun hitting the peaks. Along the trail I saw a slug about five inches long crossing the trail. Here's a photo of it:

I took another shot of it beside my foot to show it's relative length, but when I put my foot down near it, it scrunched up a little--in protection mode, I think.

There was still quite a bit of snow up there on the peaks, because of the cooler weather we had up until recently.

The wild flowers were dazzling.

Then there's the lake itself, with Sun Dial Peak on the left behind it:

I tried the fishing and caught this little monster on the first cast:

It was about seven inches long. I caught another one even smaller. The fishing appeared to be good and I would have loved to have stayed longer, but after 45 minutes, I needed to get going. I'll need to go back and fish longer sometime, when I have someone with whom to shoot the breeze.

All in all it was a great day, with more fun throughout. A gem of a day indeed.

Back to the weight loss goal

A few weeks ago, I embarked on a plan to lower my body weight to 185. I began at around 192. Then, Ann got pneumonia and I spent a week with her at the hospital eating crap food from the cafeteria, or junk food from nearby restaurants. The week she got home was more of the same. This past week was the first week I've been able to do my full workout regimen all week in over a month. I weighed myself two days ago and I was at 192. The original goal was to lose the weight by July 1st. That doesn't look realistic any more, but now that I'm back at it, I'm still trying for it. Two days ago, I also ran a 28:17 5k on the treadmill, which is back at the shape I was in at the beginning of this weight-loss plan. Now if I have no other mishaps, my goal should happen by the end of July. I will still try for the first, but it doesn't appear likely.

All that being said, here's my before shot:

Look, I don't have any kind of shirt off shot to share with you, but if I reach my goal, I promise it (the after shot) will happen. It will be the first, last, and only time I will appear shirtless online. My only reason--to show you what can be done with an hour of exercise at least four times a week, and reasonable eating habits. Stay tuned.

Sharing the sunrise

This is what the sunrise looked like from my house this morning. This is actually just after its peak. I got sidetracked just before I was going to take the picture because Ann needed something.

Still, I think it's pretty awesome!

The Who

I love this song. The Who--truly great in rock history.

Sky shots

I often find that I'm nowhere near a camera when amazing sunsets happen. Nowadays though, you can get pretty decent pics on most phones. I have a cheap phone and don't know how to use the camera on it, nor if it can be uploaded somewhere if I manage to figure out how to take a shot. For this reason, when I want to take photographs, I take real cameras. I personally believe that real cameras take real photographs and phones take snapshots. In reality, it's the person behind either one that can capture a good shot, or not.
I think my method for capturing great shots involves taking massive numbers of photos, then discarding 90 percent of them as not worthy of reproduction.
That being said, my wife Ann and I drove up near East Canyon, Utah last evening, intent on being there if the early evening sunset turned the sky to pink  and orange fire.
The sunset wasn't utterly amazing, but still, I think I was able to get some fairly decent shots.

East Canyon Reservoir at dusk

Looking back over my shoulder at the wispy clouds behind me

Mostly, those who capture the best sunsets and photos over all, spend a great deal of time out at the location from where they want to take the shot, waiting for the perfect shot. The rest of us just get lucky once in a while.

One final shot...

A Tub for Just Two

Today while doing my morning exercise, I ended up walking past the Taylorsville Municipal Pool. It wasn't open, but two unexpected guests had arrived early. Here they are:

I couldn't help but wondering if they had showered before they entered the pool. They seemed perfectly at home, their own natural oils protecting them from the chlorine in the water. Maybe they'll even get a massage after their morning swim. They did look fondly at one another. Here's another pic.

Ah, the life of a duck. It does have its appeal from time to time.

Park City the Best Town in America?

I just did a little research into Park City and found that in 2013, Outside Magazine named it as the best town in America.
Anyway, I trust Outside to like the same kinds of things I like. Here's the article: clickety-click
I'm not a drinking man per se, but there are some fabulous restaurants in Park City.
Of course, now that I found this preliminary list, I'll be searching for more things to do in Park City and its vicinity, but let me just say that if I was trying to decide between Park City and another place to relocate, like say, Boise, well, Park City would win hands down.