Miscellaneous October Photos

 

 

Nigel

 

 

Ian and cousin Samuel

 

Lisette and cousin Andrew

 

Ian of Arabia

 

 Lisette and Miles with friends in chemistry class

 

Saffy and Ian

Farewell to Summer



Sunday we hopped in the van and drove up Millcreek Canyon to see the fall leaves.  Melinda and I had gone up the previous week just by ourselves but we wanted the kids to see the colors.

 

 

It's hard to believe summer is over already.  Two weeks ago it was pleasantly cool in the canyon, but last week it was almost freezing; it was only 1 degree Celsius (33 degrees Fahrenheit).  There was ice forming on rocks in the stream already.

 

 

Ian is in the 11 year old scouts this year.  I've really enjoyed going camping with him this year.  We camped in this same canyon just last month.  Earlier in the summer we camped in Big Cottonwood Canyon and in East Canyon.  We also had fun hiking.  We also did 9 hikes together during our weekly father and son hiking club.



 

Saffy braved the cold and although she had a warm coat she somehow came only in flip-flops.  Saffron started going to Liberty Girls club this year.  She really likes doing crafts and activities with the other girls.

 

Miles and Lisette are both doing chemistry this year with some of their friends with Melinda teaching.  Lisette is really enjoying her AP English class and somewhat tolerating her math class.  She has gotten very good at crocheting and she now has a head of natty dreadlocks. 

 

 



Things have been busy and I haven't done any blog posts for a while.  In September I started a new job.  It's hard to adjust, but I'm really glad to be working as part of a team and to be able to work with a lot of new technologies.  Plus the commute is under 10 minutes, so I've been able to come home for lunch most days, which is nice.

 

Melinda is sporting the latest in headwear fashion (it's actually a pair of Nigel's pants).  Melinda is staying busy homeschooling the kids.  She works really hard at their weekly chemistry class and their history and book club groups.  

 

 

What a handsome group! Just this year both Miles and Lisette have grown taller than their Mom.  Miles seems to have grown an inch just this past month.

Speaking of Miles, he just turned fourteen last month.  We had a fun birthday with him.  He planned what he wanted to do.  We went to Bruges Waffles and Frites and had real Belgian waffles and frites.  He wanted cookies instead of cake, so we made rose water cookies, which were very tasty.

 

He's been really busy working on making his own 3-D printer. There is an open source community that has plans, but you have to get all your own parts.  He's been working hard saving his money for well over a year and now he's buying all the parts and putting it together.  He has the frame already done, and he'll have more done soon as soon as the parts arrive by mail.  Here's a picture of a completed printer.

 

 

OK, that's all for now.  Maybe I won't wait as long for my next post, but I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you. 

Coyote Gulch

I spent four days last week hiking with some of my siblings in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  Tuesday morning we hiked into Coyote Gulch.  We were graced with cloud cover which made the hike so much more enjoyable.

I'm wearing my backpack which hasn't seen any action since the early 90's.

Ruth, Joy and James are modeling the latest fashions in backcountry wear.

Clair, our intrepid guide, leads the way.

After about three miles marching through sand and then over slick rock, we reach our destination.  Yes, we were up very high.

You want me to hike down where?

Seriously, are you nuts?!  Go down there?!  Do you want me to die?! Where's the elevator?

This is a view of what we climbed down.  Yes it was completely insane.  At the end James climbed back up and retrieved my pack for the final descent and I used a rope on the way down. Thanks again, James.  Aren't little brothers great?  It reminds me of how "I didn't apologize for when I was eight and I made my younger brother have to be my personal slave."

 We had a really sweet camping spot, right underneath Jacob Hamblin's Arch.  There was also a natural spring with cool clean water just a 100 feet away.

This is the other side of the arch.

This is one of the natural amphitheaters that was carved out by the river.

Notice the people the bottom?  The sandstone walls were massive.  It reminded me of walking between the skyscrapers in Chicago, shaded almost all day.

It was breathtakingly beautiful down there.  This is a popular destination, but we went at an unpopular time and were rewarded with complete solitude.

Scenes from Spring City

I just got back from a four day backpacking trip at Coyote Gulch with four of my siblings.  On our way there we passed through our old hometown of Spring City.  My family moved here in 1983.

This the view of Horseshoe Mountain from where we used to live.  We weren't actually in Spring City proper, but a mile or so out of town.

Our friends, the Sopers, renovated this beautiful house.  I think they're trying to sell it now.

They've been working on renovating this old school for years.  I remember we once had a Halloween activity where we sat in the foyer of the school and watched the original Night of the Living Dead.  Very creepy in that building with the peeling walls and eerie shadows.

I always loved this painted billboard.

Right next to the gas station is this monument where you can actually drink the spring water.

Here's the old Bishop's Storehouse.

I didn't appreciate how cool this chapel was while I attended there.  It's over a century old.

Here's one of the many restored homes.  Every may they have a historic home tour where you can go and see inside.

This is Joe Bennion's pottery shop.  They made a documentary about him and his life creating pottery for a living in the early 90's.

Forbes recently listed Spring City as one of the nation's prettiest towns.  I sure didn't think so growing up there as a teenager in the 80's, but driving through there I would agree, it is beautiful.

Noisy Toddlers

Nigel and his cousin Elliot were having some type of competition involving breakfast cereal. What could they be thinking? What goes on in their little minds?

Wasatch Wildflower Festival

Warning: this post contains lots of boring flower pictures and their corresponding boring scientific Latin names.  

I took the day off Friday and took Miles and Ian to the Wasatch Wildflower Festival.  We drove up Big Cottonwood Canyon in the morning and parked at the base of Brighton Ski Resort.  The volunteers were all excited when we arrived because we were the first ones of the day.  We had our own private guide take us on a hike and show us all the wildflowers.  It was overcast and we had a few light rain showers, but it was a great respite from the desert valley heat.

In this picture the white flowers are Richardson's geranium (Geranium richardsonii), the black ones are western coneflower (Rudbeckia occidentalis), the red ones are Indian paintbrush (Castilleja spp), the purple ones are monkshood (Aconitum columbianum), the yellow ones are groundsel (Senecio spp) and the big white one is  false hellebore (Veratrum viride).

 This is native Utah bush is twinberry honeysuckle (Lonicera involucrata).

If you look closely at this flower it looks like a bunch of elephant heads on a stick, thus the common name of elephant heads (Pedicularis groenlandica).  It grows in wet marshes and along streams.

We saw lots of these plants last week in Millcreek Canyon, but they weren't in bloom and we couldn't figure out what they were.  Our guide told us these are false hellebore (Veratrum viride).

It was raining earlier in the morning and everything was wet.  All the volunteers had jackets and long pants and we felt a little unprepared in our shorts and t-shirts.  But we only got a few sprinkles and the day turned out really nice.  I liked this arrangement of monkshood or wolf's bane (Acontium columbianum) with paintbrush (Castilleja spp).  There are lots of varieties of paintbrush and they mingle between each other so I'm not sure which ones these are.  Painbrush are interesting because they are semi-parasitic and their colors may change depending upon the host plant.

I was excited to see a white version of Monkshood.  We had never seen one before.

We saw these beautiful pink Lewis monkey flowers (Mimulus lewisii) growing out of a rivulet. 

There is a lot of variety of buckwheat or sulphur flowers (Eriogonum spp.) growing up there.  

Ian and Miles were great hiking buddies.  Miles took most of the photos (at least the ones that turned out).

We enjoyed this patch of fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) growing near the top of the trail.  After the big Yellowstone fires in 1988 fireweed was the first plant to appear and start to stabilize the soil. 

We saw this American pika scurrying back and forth between boulders, he was carrying little branches of leaves and grass onto a pile on a boulder.  

Pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea) has nice little white flowers which last for a long time (thus the name).  This is a flower I've enjoyed growing in my own garden.

I was really excited to find this flower, Monardella odoratissima, which is also known as mountain coyote mint, mountain beebalm, and mountain pennyroyal.  When you touch the leaves, your fingers are left with a wonderful mint smell.

Here is a closeup of the blooms.

The sky mostly cleared up when we got up to Lake Mary.  It was so nice to be outdoors and the lake is just stunning.

 We took a break on a boulder and enjoyed the view.  We had trail mix for a snack and soon we were accosted by a scurry of cheeky chubby chipmunks.  They ran all over trying to get our food.  They were hilarious to watch.

 On our way back down we saw some yellow monkey flower (Mimulus guttatus).

This is the approximate site of the fateful ski accident of 2009.  I don't think I've been up here since then.

 There were a few patches of Rocky Mountain penstemons (Penstemon strictus) near the base of the mountain.

We were driving down the mountain when on a whim we decided to take Guardsman Pass over the mountain.  The road was very steep and very rough in places, but we were rewarded by some awesome views of the mountains and valleys below.  We were glad we took it.  It felt like we were on a mini vacation in a remote forest.  

We ended up in Midway and we went and saw the crater.  Miles and Ian's have great-great grandparents who immigrated to Midway from Switerland which makes them 1/8 Swiss.  They have a little grocery store there called "The Store" that has a built in deli and pizza place.  We ordered a delicious pesto mushroom and spinach pie.  It was an excellent finish to a very fun outing.