May 2022

Long time no blog, am I right?

The past few weeks have been pretty uneventful. I was waiting for something interesting to happen before posting, and then all of a sudden three weeks went by and now the month is over. In hindsight, some noteworthy things did happen, so please enjoy this recap of basically the entire month of May.

Ian and I are continuing our tour of all the state parks, most recently visiting Rockport State Park near Park City.

The focal point here is yet another reservoir. While nice, this park definitely falls towards the bottom of our favorites list, tainted by the man a few campsites over beating his dog and the loud generator whirring into the night from the RV next door. We don’t feel quite ready for this yet, but we’re excited for more backcountry camping where you don’t have to concern yourself with obnoxious neighbors.

In Utah you can camp on BLM land for free (Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter - I definitely did not pick up on the acronym difference when locals were first telling me about this and was super confused). Anyway, you can camp on BLM land, which is plentiful in Southern Utah, so we are hoping to do that maybe this fall when we feel a bit more comfortable with our camp supplies and set up.

If nothing else, Rockport State Park had some nice views. We definitely made use of my new binoculars to watch birds and boats and the bougie Park City mansions on the mountain tops.

The RV next door had a cute dog, but they kept it tied up to the picnic cover the entire time and through the night. These were not the same people as the man who beat his dog.

On our way home the next morning, we stopped at a trailhead along Deer Creek State Park (another reservoir park but much nicer). The trail takes you from Deer Creek to Soldier Hollow, a nordic center where we’ve gone cross country skiing before, and runs 8 miles long across one side of the reservoir. It’s very pretty there.

I don’t know why I took this picture from the parking lot, but apparently I did and didn’t take many others, so you’ll just have to believe me that it’s pretty here.

Facing the other side of the parking lot we have snowy mountains.

Told you it was pretty.

Don’t fall off the cliff.

You can’t necessarily tell from the pictures, but this trail has a lot of uphill and downhill turns and curves. This will be relevant later, when we returned to the trail the next week to mountain bike. More on that later.

Ian liked the little purple flowers.

Despite the fact that this trail is awesome, we didn’t see very many people - just a couple of mountain bikers and three people riding horses. A lot of people fish along the trail, so most of the foot traffic is from that.

Not as nice as Watauga Lake, but it’ll do.

We liked this trail so much that we decided to throw some level of caution to the wind and bring our bikes back the very next weekend to tackle the trail. It’s 8 miles one way, 15 miles out and back, which we had done before on the paved paths closer to our place.

Remember when I mentioned the uphills and downhills? Yeah, that makes cycling very difficult. About 3 miles in, I came upon a sharp uphill turn on a slope of tiny rocks at the edge of a hill. Then, I fell.

Fortunately, I didn’t fall all the way down the hill. I will add that this was more of a hill and definitely not a cliffside plummeting to my death kind of situation. I caught myself about 6 feet down with my right knee and left knuckles on a pile of rocks. No blood or anything, but definitely some goose eggs and bruises in my future.

I must’ve gotten up too fast to climb back up the hill because when I got back up to the trail I was about ready to pass out. As many of you know, I have a history of passing out and am generally considered a pass out risk. It wasn’t too hot out, and I had plenty of food and water, so I suspect the disorientation of the fall and my getting up too quickly led me to lose consciousness like that. I didn’t 100% pass out, but I was at a solid 99.5% for a little while there.

Ian had never actually been around me in-person during one of my episodes, so needless to say, he was pretty freaked out. He did a pretty good job of keeping it together, all things considered.

I don’t actually know how long I sat/laid on the side of the trail, but eventually I felt better and we got ready to make the 3 mile trek back to the car. Fortunately, during this whole ordeal, nobody else passed by. We hardly saw anyone the whole morning there, actually. However, when we were just about ready to leave another couple came biking and the woman slipped (much more gracefully than I did, as she didn’t fall) on the same exact spot that I wiped out. You have no idea how validating that was.

Anyway, I had no issues riding back to the car and actually felt like I did better on the way back than on the way out. Feeling unsatisfied with the outdoor adventures of the day, I made Ian stop at a park that we had passed a million times but never actually been to on the way home in Provo Canyon (my favorite canyon, actually). He was hesitant, but eventually gave his nurse Ian seal of approval to the quick stop.

Worth it, don’t you think?

We didn’t walk far (I was kind of beat up and limping from my knee) but we found another paved bike trail that leads to a popular trailhead for a waterfall. The park had tons of picnic tables and green space and was actually super nice.

The Provo River also runs through the park.

All that to say, I am responsible and know the signs of when I’m going to pass out and know what to do to stay as safe and possible during the process. I wear my sunscreen and always bring more than enough water and snacks. I have a big bruise on my knee, but other than am totally fine. So don’t worry about me :)

Let’s see, what else has happened?

Work is going well. Every time I fill the positions I need to fill and can move onto bigger projects, things get shaken up and I’m back to recruiting again. It’s a little frustrating, but ultimately I don’t mind too much. I like my job. Ian is feeling a little burnout with his job, but he’s working on it.

We’re trying to clean out all of this random frozen fruit we have in our freezer, so we made a pie yesterday. It actually turned out pretty well and was easy to make. Pie crust, frozen raspberries, and a little sugar and flour go a long way.

Sam has a boyfriend now, which is horrifying. She’s 15, so I guess that’s normal, but I hate everything about it. I told her she can’t date until she’s 30, to which she replied, “You’re married and you’re not even 30.” Touché.

REI is having a pretty great members-only sale right now, which is fun but dangerous. The cashier rung me up wrong at REI last week, so I got a nice fleece pullover for the price of a sale t-shirt. Score! That’s probably the highlight of my month, honestly.

I’ve been hitting some PRs in the gym, which is fun. My goal is to be able to squat Ian’s body weight, and I’m about 30 pounds shy of reaching that. Ian and I also signed up for the town’s 5k in July, so I guess I better start running again too.

This is Hank. He’s moved into our front porch. Since it’s been raining all weekend we haven’t seen him. I told Ian Hank is our first fur baby (Hank is a gross fuzzy spider), and Ian did not like that at all.

Lastly, yesterday we went on a walk in the morning and decided to venture out a couple extra blocks from the park where we normally walk. We found this cute little walk-up restaurant/cafe that serves breakfast food, hot pretzels, and ice cream. There’s a small but nice little park right next to it that has a bunch of historical facts about the city of Draper. It was a pretty nice morning, spontaneously exploring new places and things right in our own backyard.

We had breakfast under this gazebo.

You can kind see a teeny bit of Ian’s red 4Runner and the cafe behind the trees.

So majestic

This is a dedication to this man’s multiple wives. I wish I could say this was the only one in this tiny park. Utah is wild.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading! I will do my best not to wait three weeks between blogs anymore.

I hope you all are finding ways to cope and maintain your mental health as the world crumbles around us. That got a little grim, but please take care of yourselves. I feel like I would be remiss if I wrote like I was out here living in la-la land full of rainbows and mountains and that current events didn’t affect me, my family, or friends. Writing this blog serves as a great distraction for me, and as a reminder of the things I am grateful for. I hope it serves a similar purpose in your life too.

Love and miss you all,

Chloe