Mountains Do

I primarily want to share some pictures and stories from several trips I took in July. We spent too much time in a car out of necessity, but lots of time outdoors on hiking trails, near mountain lakes and rivers, and had beautiful weather throughout. I spent more hours on roads called “Scenic Byways” than I ever had in my life. To me, scenic byways are code for “you may drive off a cliff because you can’t stop staring at the beautiful mountain scenery.”

The first weekend trip was to Annie’s mom’s log cabin in the Uinta Mountains. It’s a true log cabin, and it’s way off the beaten path. I had been up there back in January to go snowmobiling, where you can only actually get there via snowmobile. Since it’s summer, Annie’s plucky Jetta got us up the winding dirt roads with ease, although it’s much better suited to a 4x4 truck. The kids were troopers on the easy-to-medium difficulty hikes we did. At a gorgeous spot called Scout Lake, the kids ventured out onto some shallow rocks, when I spotted a little fish, maybe about 6”. It looked like it was frozen in place, not moving even the slightest. So the kids and I looked closer, and we could tell it was ensnared in some fishing line, wrapped around a stick. Zoey and Preston crept out closer, prodding the stick, and the fish would start straining against the line. Zoey got brave and dragged the stick out of the water, but it became clear the fishing line had cut into the fish’s belly and he wasn’t going to make it. So we left it. The kids were sad. After hiking around the lake a bit more, we were crossing that same spot when a seagull swooped down and nabbed that little dying fish right out of the water! It’s the circle of life, it’s the wheel of fortune…

The following weekend, Annie and I packed up my car and we headed up to Grand Tetons National Park for some tent camping, rafting, and hiking. The drive itself was great. The scenic byway on this trip included some 8% and 10% grades between eastern Idaho and Jackson, WY. Speaking of Idaho, we passed not 15 miles from Preston, ID – the setting for Napoleon Dynamite. We thought about stopping to play some tether ball, but we decided to keep chewing up miles instead. Jackson is a great mountain town, mixing the super-rich with real life cowboys.

As we entered the park, signs everywhere told us we were either going to burn down the forest, or get eaten by bears. This was going to be awesome! The bear threat level was Reddish-Orange. Fortunately, we found about the last available campsite in the park (after stopping at several others and getting sent away like so much touristy bother), which was at Lizard Creek on the north end of GTNP. Relieved to be out of the car, we cooked dinner on our small, controlled fire in the designated fire pit, then stashed everything back in the car. As I lay in the tent, I heard every crack of a stick or rustle of leaves clearly; sure the bears were going to find us among the 50 or so campsites.

Saturday morning, we packed up early, and drove south through the park, stopping along the lakes and several scenic spots. Our goal was to get a more desirable campsite, then go rafting. Annie knew of a campsite east of the park, in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, but as we approached, it showed “NO FIRES”. So we backtracked to a site in the park called Gros Ventre (pronounced ‘gro vont’). It’s named after a river, and roughly translates to “Slightly less threat of getting eaten by bears”. After reserving our site, we headed back to Jackson, and got hooked up with Dave Hansen’s Whitewater, getting the last 2 seats on a 16 person raft. With several hours to kill, we walked around downtown Jackson. Thirsty, we stopped into one of those country-boy bars next to the rafting office. I swear, everyone there stared at us like we were aliens. After a longer-than-expected bus ride to the drop in point, we hit the water for my first rafting experience. It was somewhat of a joy-ride tour, mixed with four or five lower class rapids. The best part was a long stretch of calm river, where most of us just jumped in and floated next to the raft. Quite refreshing. We were pretty exhausted once we got back to our site, but had time to cook some bratwurst, corn, and chili on the fire. Being several miles east of the mountains, we had a great sunset view, too.

Sunday, we packed up and headed back into the park. After some much needed coffee and bagels, we visited the Jenny Lake campsite and took the ferry across the lake to some cool hiking trails and river falls. We decided to hike back, rather than boat, and the 2+ mile hike was tougher than expected, with lots of rocky terrain and hills. Best workout I’ve had in months. With legs slightly burning, we stopped at a great little pizza place in Jackson on the way out of town. We made awesome time on the way back to SLC, only stopping once in Blackfoot, ID. Sadly, we saw no bears during the trip. But we did see a heard of bison!

I gotta do more camping. It forces me to be outside and do things I wouldn’t normally do. We have at least 7 national parks within an easy drive from Salt Lake, so I’m sure it will become a more frequent part of my summers here.
http://picasaweb.google.com/sj.gingrich/MountainTime

Update: USA vs. Japan

The mighty Chestnut has set the stage by topping Kobayashi in the Nathan's hot dog eating contest, with a world record at that! http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=2925803

If Jimmy can do it, Jeremy can too! Vote for Bonderman! Uncle Sam wants YOU... to vote.

http://www.mlb.com/mlb/events/all_star/y2007/fv/ballot.html

Be patriotic... Vote for Bonderman!

http://www.mlb.com/mlb/events/all_star/y2007/fv/ballot.html

Hideki Okajima is leading the vote. He's from Japan. Jeremy Bonderman is a Detroit pitcher, and he's from the United States of America. It's our DUTY on this holiday to get Bondo into the All-Star Game! Vote over and over!

USA!

Whew.

I'm whipped. Back to working full time +, had my first Mrs Fields, um, field trip last week in Chicago, and just spent the evening taking Z & P swimming, getting them fed, doing laundry, helping them pack for their weekend with Grandma at the cabin, getting them to bed, paying bills, and providing some smalltime business consulting for a friend. It's 10:00 and finally peaceful. Annie and I have a nice reprieve this weekend - Sat and Sun are her first consecutive days off since about April - and we're going to enjoy some Utah outdoors, although I haven't revealed our secret destination yet.

Michigan sports fans: How weird is it that the Tigers are so good still? Chris Berman on Baseball Tonight yesterday said something like "...and the Tigers, who are always so fun to watch with their great young pitching..." Step back in time with me, just 15 months ago, and imagine any respectable analyst saying that sentence. You'd either assume he was being a sarcastic jerk, or you'd recommend his transfer to ESPN7.

One thing I love about my first spring/summer in Utah is this:






I'm trying to think of some witty and wise anecdotes to share but it's not going to happen. I remember when a 'bed time' of 10:30 was laughable. Now it's a necessity. I'm nearly 29, after all.

BARRACUDA! Killers

I was going to write this post chronologically, but then I realized a review of The Killers concert would be anti-climactic after my Memorial Day stories. To Thursday's concert then: There's a warehouse-like building on the shore of the Great Salt Lake, with faux-Arabian domes and windows all around called the Great Saltair. The setting is mysterious, with the expansive but empty lake, salty dry flats, and mountains on the fringes. Anyway, the concert was great - Annie even enjoyed the few songs she recognized, but couldn't hang in the midst of the crowd with me except for the openers and the finale. But it was memorable. I hadn't been to a good rock concert in quite a while, and it felt good to leave with that 'my head's in a tin can' feeling and scratchy voice.

Memorial Day weekend, I flew to LAX, met up with my family, and headed south on the 405 to lovely Dana Point for a family reunion / 60th Anniversary Party for my grandparents, Gene and Mary Carter. Friday was a catch up day with all the cousins, aunts and uncles, and we had a sweet game of Family Jeopardy in our reserved conference room (about 35 people in the room). Saturday, a group of us congregated at 5:45 am, and boarded a charter fishing boat. After an hour of luckless giant squid fishing (seriously), the captain caught wind of a BARRACUDA! school down the coast a bit. The next several hours were spent frantically grabbing 5" sardines out of the bait holds, jamming hooks thru their snouts, and casting out to land one of these sharp-toothed fish. Once you hook one, you reel it in toward the side of the boat, and then a crew member grabs a huge hook called a 'gaff', stabs the fish through the belly and pulls it on board. AWESOME!!! The three BARRACUDA! I landed were the three largest fish I've ever caught. What made this more interesting was the constant presence of sea lions, seagulls and pelicans. The sea lions (or seals, I still don't know the difference) would chase your bait and bite its body off, leaving the fish-head on your hook. Or worse, you'd hook a BARRACUDA! and they would chase that, grabbing hold and snapping your line. To better express the excitement of our first encounter with this school of starving fish, here is a sequence of things you'd see and hear:
(12 of the 18 people on board hook a fish)
"Fish on! Fish on! Fish on!"
(Barracuda move quick, so people constantly switch places and get lines tangled)
"Ah, I lost him." "Stay with it!" "Move with your fish people!"
(Sea lion steals bait)
"Crap! A Sea lion stole my bait!" "Get more bait!" "I think an egret pooped on me!"
(Someone gets a BARRACUDA! close to the side)
"GAFF! GAFF!"
(Crew member runs behind you with a giant hook and stabs fish)
"HOORAY!"

I highly recommend ocean fishing to all of us Michiganders who are used to hauling in 1/4 pound bass and blue gill all our lives. It is so fun to say BARRACUDA! that I felt compelled to spell it that way each time, as you may have noticed. Saturday night, as we were prepping to see a slide show of the pictures my Uncle Dan took (he's a professional photog., so they're nice); we started humming the riff to Barracuda by Heart. My cousin Mark's girlfriend Debin suddenly says, "I think I have that CD in my car!" Sure enough, 5 mins. later we were watching the slideshow to the rockin' sounds of the Wilson sisters. Here it is:
BARRACUDA It helps if you play this in the background: VIDEO

On Sunday, we had a church service in our conference room hosted by my Aunt Becky, who is an accomplished music minister, which featured a recording of one of my Grandfather's sermons from about 1989. He mentioned both my mother and my sister Wendy in the sermon. I have a unique family, where 4 generations of us (probably 40 people total) were gathered in a room for a Christian church service in a hotel on the beach, and we were all cool with it. We all think we can sing too, so we sang old hymns in 4-part harmony. The oldest grandchild from each family also participated in some way. My Grandpa recently wrote a book called "My Life - As I Remember It", had it published via Amazon's self-publishing service, and gave each of us a hard cover copy. Each of his children's copies had a unique note written in it; and each of us grandkids had the same words of wisdom: "Remember who you are", signed by Grandpa. He has certainly left a legacy that has reached well beyond our own family. Congrats to Gramps and Grandma on 60 years!