Park(e) City Redux

Waiting in line to get on the Alpine Slide

Cons!

Ready to tear it up!

Perhaps the greatest thing about buying a waterproof and shockproof camera is that we can hand it off to the kids... Emma shot this one of Mia and the next two...

Notice the sign over Max's noggin.



Underwater Emma

Jackson shot this one of himself.

Videos! Our favorite is probably the last one, but they're all worth a few seconds of your time.




Thanks for a great weekend in Park City, Parkes! Happy Birthday Emma!

Flaming Gorge and the Green

Over the Fourth of July, we had to (got to) go to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area so I could do some Forest Service work. We camped at Red Canyon and Mustang Ridge, kayaked from Sunny Cove, toured the reservoir in style in a State Park Ranger boat with John the State Park Ranger and Ali the Forest Service Ranger, and the highlight of the trip was a trip down the beautiful Green River in a Forest Service dory with Shaun the BLM river guide and his girl Becky. It was a great but short trip to a place we never would have thought to go.

Buckboard Crossing


Greens Lake


Red Canyon sunrise


Antelope Flat (left)/Mustang Ridge (right)

Little Hole, the put-in for the Green River trip

The bow of the dory and the Green

First boat-in campsite on the Green. Look at that crystal-clear water!

Near Trail's End campsite, above Red Creek Rapid

Heading into Red Creek Rapid


Bad video of our first rapid. Although it was only a Class II (or maybe even a 1+), it was exhilarating!

Our dory at the take-out, near John Jarvie Ranch.

Southern Utah

Trav and I spent Memorial weekend in Southern Utah, and I finally had time to put together a little slide show of our digital camera pics. All of my Polaroids are in my Flickr photostream, with lots more toy camera photos to come. We spent our first night in Panguitch, at the aptly named Panguitch KOA. We rolled into town at 10 pm, and by 6:30 the next morning, we were on the road into Bryce, so unfortunately, we can't tell you if Panguitch was a nice town or not. Trav said the coffee from the Sinclair blew. We stopped at Ruby's to grab some breakfast foods and drove on into Bryce and stopped to eat at the first viewpoint which I can't remember the name of. Trav stayed in Bryce and hiked 15+ straight-down/straight-up miles while I went off to work for the Forest Service. I saw some really beautiful places that I never would have known about otherwise.

We met up in Bryce later that evening and drove out for dinner at Bryce Pines, a place our friend Kelly recommended. It was delicious. After pork chops and a steak and apple pie, we drove to Cannonville and spent the night at the Cannonville KOA, perhaps the world's finest campground ever. We want to live there and be camp hosts! There's a photo of one of the host's RVs in the slideshow. We spent Saturday at Kodachrome Basin State Park, and another night at the KOA. Sunday we drove up US 12 to Torrey and Capitol Reef, two little places we fell in love with and can't wait to visit again. We didn't do much hiking due to the rain and the trails we wanted to hike were closed because of flash flood danger. Sunday afternoon we were able to hike the Hickman Bridge Trail, and Monday morning we hiked Grand Wash. There are lots of photos from Grand Wash in the slideshow. It was gorgeous!

We had a really fun trip and look forward to going back again.

I used Photobucket for the slideshow and it's giving me extreme grief, so please enjoy the slideshow as its own separate post. Argh!

Chips and Salsa

Trav loves it when I take photos of him. He also loves it when I post said photos on our blog. (Note the sarcasm.) I've recently started shooting a lot of film again - instead of just Polaroid - and I've fallen in love with my vintage Diana toy camera again. It's been about two years since I used it last, and this image is from one of the last rolls I ran through it back then. We kayaked Pineview that day. It was late June of the first year with our kayaks. We put in on what I guess you could call the neck of the Point. It was a little sheltered beach just past the Sheriff's cabin on the north side, which as of last year, they'd closed by way of new No Parking signs standing sentinel over the dirt parking strip. Anyway, we put in and paddled to a nice little beach further west on the point, and played in the sunshine and ate lunch. I remember chips and salsa. That was our summer of kayaking with chips and salsa. We'd put our picnic lunch in a soft-sided cooler and tuck it in the stern of one of the boats, and off we'd go. Turkey sandwiches and chips and salsa.

We paddled more that summer than we have in summers since, and just thinking about it all makes me a little nostalgic and very anxious for the coming warm weather. And thinking about it also made me remember the video I made with my cell phone on what was probably our third or fourth outing that first year. It was 2006, April 22. Pixelated and tiny, it's a nine-second clip of Trav happily drumming on the top of his kayak while floating amid the soon-to-set sun. The water was glassy and deep blue, and seagulls chattered overhead. What fun we had. I am looking forward to getting out on the water again.