Tuesday, June 9

Tuesday morning dawned bright and sunny.

A perfect birthday morning!

We dressed and headed to the Maverick

gas station/store and picked up a couple

of Kyle's MOAB breakfast burritos and

then headed up to the mountains.

The canyons are lovely and green!

There was still snow on the peaks,

but it was a lovely day.

Beautiful blue sky!

We headed to Tony Grove.

One of Kyle's favorite hikes.

The change in elevation was felt by my chips... lol.

There was quite a bit of snow on the trail.

It was probably in the mid 40's, so it was melting.

It snowed up there on Monday,

but it was wet and slushy underneath.

There were LOTS of rushing little creeks.

Lots of snow melt.

Hard to tell, but I'm crossing a creek.

Thank goodness for my sticks!

Some creeks were more challenging than others.

Of course, Kyle, the mountain goat, 

just walked across with his hands in his pockets.

It was fun in the snow!

And luckily another man and his dog had gone up

before us, so we never had to try to figure out

where the trail was supposed to be.

I only slipped and fell twice.

My jeans got wet, but it was only embarrassing.

Kyle got a good chuckle.

And pulled me up.

We stopped and built some little snowmen!

We laughed and laughed our heads off.

My first photo bomb.

It was very difficult giving them mouths...

We left them there to greet any other climbers.

However, the sky clouded over and it looked

like a storm might be blowing in.

So we didn't make it all the way to the mountain lake.

It's over the hill behind Kyle and Straight Down.

I was pretty sure I could make it down,

but not at all sure I could make it back up.

The snow was REALLY slippery.

And by then our feet were pretty wet.

There was LOTS of snow on the top of Naomi Peak.

We actually saw some people up there on the top

and could see where they had skied back down.

Crazy people!

It wasn't all snow though.

There was lots of bare ground.

And lots of little green plants and flowers.

The snowmen didn't survive.

It was too warm for them...

There were lots of boulders for Kyle to perch on.

We both took LOTS of pictures.

By the time we got to the bottom, the weather had

cleared up nicely, so we decided to walk around

the lake at the bottom.

We didn't make it all the way around, the trail on the far side

had quite a bit of slippery, slushy snow and it's 

pretty steep. So we went part way and then came back.

(There was a big boulder with deeeeep snow all around it...

you had to step over a deep hole between the snow and the

rock both to get on and off it... I did ok on the way out,

but on the way back my back foot slipped as I was

trying to get on the rock and I fell... laughing my head off...

but unfortunately I got a major cramp in the arch of my

right foot and couldn't even stand up...

So I just crouched there on my hands and knees,

laughing and waiting for my cramp to go away...

Finally managed to get up and get off the rock.

But we wondered what the other people on the other 

side of the lake thought was going on...)

Such a pretty place!

We finally decided to head back to the valley.

And on the way back into town, we stopped

by the Logan Temple and walked around it.

Of course it was closed, but still beautiful.

And the afternoon was lovely again.

It's on quite a hill.

Something we discovered while walking around.

So we had to climb back up it!

I was TIRED!

But it was a lovely afternoon...

Next, we drove up another canyon to the 

Hardware Ranch and then Kyle took us 

up a fire road.

We saw a small herd of deer...

There were 4, but one was really shy.

We saw a couple of realtor signs and took pictures.

It was BEAUTIFUL land up there!

The field was full of these weird yellow flowers.

And a new resort that looked pretty neat.

We could have joined the highway (39) in 

N. Ogden and taken the highway back to Logan,

but decided the fire road was so pretty we just

turned around and went back the way we came.

By the time we got back into town it was getting late.

So we ended Kyle's birthday with an online order for

Fettuccine Alfredo, bread sticks, salad and soup from

Olive Garden and ate it in our hotel room.

It was a lovely day!

And he was happy he didn't waste a single minute of it.

Happy Birthday Kyle!