September 2013

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I still don't think I've seen Garrett finish a race successfully. I saw one heat race he finished, but every other time his kart had some sort of mechanical problem that ended in a chain coming loose or an axle going bad conveniently during the main. It's been a streak of bad luck recently, but I know as soon as things are in order with that darned kart well be seeing some wild success from this guy. On the brighter side, Ken won first place in an awesome main. 

I also brought my sewing skills back with some refashions this month. This was probably my most challenging because the zippers were put in on preexisting seams that didn't seem to want to come apart cleanly. They turned out aight though.

My first ever Mountain Biking experience was horrible. Although it was fun looking back, I was miserable the whole time. I couldn't stay in the bike, I kept crashing, and my butt hurt like crazy. I was bawling by halfway up the hill and Garett was as patient as humanly possible with me but it was a trial for him. I was so upset and cranky, but I learned how to mountain bike much better, and I feel like it wouldn't be as bad if I were to try again. 

Mindy came down and we went to City Creek and played around downtown. It was a nice evening.

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Whitewash Sand Dunes with the Maxfields

It's unfortunate that no picture can ever do justice the difficulty of what we did on those four wheelers. We worked so hard, sometimes getting off to help every ATV down or up a problem individually. I really loved the adrenaline rush of climbing questionable rocks and the reward of making it.  We went all day every day, and only came back for lunch to keep us going. At the end of the day I was sore and tired, and I slept hard so I could get up the next morning and do it all again. Garrett surprised me on the last day and knocked on our RV door. He said he wasn't going to be able to come. I was so shocked I jumped on him. 

 The scenery at whitewash sand dunes is downright breathtaking. I tried to get some hurried panos when the group stopped for water. We did a long ride out to secret spire, and my face was covered in dirt in this picture.

 You can't really see it but Spencer was covered in mud in this picture.

This is me trying to get up a small verticle waterfall with help from the boys. Don't ask my why I was trying to stand up. It's a good thing Brent was there to push/catch me.

 Taylor and Nikki let us borrow some guns of all kinds and we went out shooting clay pidgeons and paint cans and balloons and such. It was good practice for me and I hit a few pidgeons myself.

This pic of Jesse and his dirtbike totally sums it up. Jesse and his bike was like a cowboy and his horse. He went everywhere on that thing, and I saw him up on the highest rock points at times, making his way through things I probably couldn't crawl through on my hands and knees. I would love to be so adventurous. On the last night we brought a table into Brent and Sharee's cabin to play some games, and laughed so hard playing telestrations. The campfires were delightful, and the s'mores were tasty. The conclusion that I've come to is that it doesn't matter if we have trips planned all over the world next year. We will still save PTO for this trip. It is completely indispensable. I don't think I've really felt that kind of thrill and dirt in a long time. Southern Utah and the Maxfields are amazing.

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San Fran

So we step off the plane in San Francisco and the first thing Mindy says is "so why did we come to San Francisco?" I guess mom just bought her a plane ticket and no one explained it all to her. Such a Mindy moment. We had a layover in Las Vegas and some random stranger overheard Mindy say that she'd never gambled before. He handed her a dollar and she tried her luck at the slots. It paid off! 50 cents richer.

 We got to the airport and Chelsea came to pick us up. Rosie and Annelise were happy to see us!

 We spent a glorious afternoon in the sun riding bikes around main street and ate delicious sandwiches at this neat little place.

 The beach wasn't very warm, but it was sunny enough to be fun.

  Then we drove a looong 7 hours up to meet mom in quaint little humboldt county. The drive up through wine country was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, and highway 1 is truly a bucket list drive.We saw a LOT of big trees, first at the Jedediah Smith state park, and then in the southern Spring Creek parks. Dad and I eventually won the battle to go see the "tallest tree", even though it was a steep hike.

 This was the best pic I could get of the San Francisco bridge. It was super rainy when we drove across.

 We crawled inside a tree with a hole in it and this was the best we could do. There were worse pics. We called the one on the right the "camper tree". It's called the "big tree" in real life, making me think it's probably the tree with the largest diameter there.

 On the right is my selfie with the tallest tree in the background. I had to take off my shoes and cross a river barefoot to get that shot. Below is another excited handstand pic with the Libbey Tree.

    I talked mom into paying for a trip to Alcatraz. We took the ferry out and did the audiotour there. It was really neat. I watched the 1970's Alcatraz movie before I went to get a good idea of the famous stories of Alcatraz. It was super beautiful.

 I slept right at the foot of Annelises bed. It was really funny.

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