How to make a trail

Ever been on a mountain trail and wondered how they were able to make a flat, clear trail in rocky, rooty terain? You just need one of these!



The group in Park City that creates and maintains all the trails is called Mountain Trails. Who would have thought of that one? They are an awesome organization and their work is key to making PC a great place for outdoor people. This weapon is a little bulldozer, only about 4 feet wide. On the back is has some hooks for ripping out rocks and roots. It is a mean little machine and can apparently cut trail in a hurry.

Midway Swiss Days

Julie and I went over to Midway today. It is a little town about 20 minutes from Park City that got started with buildings with a Swiss architecture. It makes for a quaint little place. This time each year, they have the Swiss Days Festival. This is mostly a giant outdoor Arts and Craps Festival. That wasn't a typo. They have a lot of nice stuff at good prices, and then they have a lot of crap.

Mostly what amazed me is that they have a LOT of people. This was a quick iPhone snapshot looking down one of the rows. Wall to wall people. And lots of buying, not just browsing. Julie got a few things but I didn't fair well at either art or crap. I was much better at just people watching. They had shuttle bus loads coming up from both Salt Lake City and Provo.

Anyone (but me) can do 100 push ups

Back at the end of July, I posted here about a program to get to 100 push ups in 6 weeks. OK. I am now six weeks into it and I appear to be on the push up short bus. I do feel a difference, especially in my ability to do multiple sets, but my count has "soared" from 20 to 32. I feel like the government, taking three times as long to deliver half what was promised.

Oh well, at least I am doing five sets of push ups every other day. That has to count for something.

A repeat

This picture was from early in our house construction. I put it on the blog about two years ago, but just ran across it again when I was looking for some pictures of wiring in the wall. Did we dig a big hole or what? For perspective, you can see the 12 foot wall in the back and the 56 pound dog in the front.

Another day, another hike

We headed up into the Uintah mountains this morning for a hike on the Lofty Lake Trail. Jim is giving Jasper some love while Bill looks on. Fortunately, this was near the highest point of the hike. All down hill from here.



How did Jasper get in every picture? Here he is with Loris and Julie.



... and of course, Jasper with Hollie, the Benson's dog. We keep trying to get Jasper and Holly to be a couple, but Jasper hasn't bought in yet.



Julie, with the valley in the background. You can see one of the many lakes in the area. It's quite lovely. And quite rocky.



The hiking was up around 10,000 feet, so it was nice and cool. A wonderful day!

Mom's visit

This week my mom came out from Maryland to visit with us. We ended up doing lots of fun and interesting things. Park City can be great during the summer. Here we are at the Park City Silly Market. It's a arts/crafts/food fair on Main Street every Sunday.



We went over to the Park City History Museum and signed up for the one hour walking tour. Our tour guide, Clarence, knew everything about the town's history and wanted to share it. Two hours into our one hour walk, we left him still chatting to the others in our group.



Julie cooked up a feast for mom, Jim Covaleski and the Benson's. All the sugar addicts in our group were quite pleased with Julie's gorgeous dessert.



Mom tagged along on one of the "try and wear out Jasper" visits to the city park.



Perhaps the highlight of her visit was seeing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with the Utah Symphony. They were outstanding!! There are two hundred and fifty singers. Can you find the two black people? Welcome to Utah......



We took a few long walks. Down past the McPolin barn we discovered some new outdoor art on the trail. There were several different styles, but this was my favorite.



A great visit and a safe and succesful return home.

Bear warning

My friend Bill Benson sent this. It is a warning sign for bears in the park. Double click on it so you can read it. What a great sense of humor!

What are those grey things?

After having sunny days almost all summer long, we have finally started getting some monsoon rains. Today we had a few batches of hail, but yesterday was just rain. The Covaleski's, Benson's and Joyce's headed up to Guardsman's Pass to do some hiking.



We seemed to lose the trail in a big way, but that lead to some wandering through the meadows.



Double-click on this picture to see all the flowers. They were in bloom everywhere!



After finally finding the trail again, we got to the top of the ridge. The views were awesome, but it started raining a bit harder so we headed back to the cars.

Notice that Holly Benson ( a chocolate lab) and Jasper Joyce (a stylish mutt) were with us. Jasper is wearing the latest in "Carry Your Own Damn Stuff" fashion.

She's breaking up!

Sometimes surprises are good. Sometimes not. I was walking past the sliding glass doors to our patio when I noticed a lot of broken glass. The first thought was "oh crap, someone has broken in!" It turns out that we had a defective glass panel, and it decided to shatter into lots and lots of tiny pieces.



It might be hard to tell, but there was enough broken glass to fill an entire 5 gallon paint bucket. My guess is that we will be cleaning up tiny glass particles for the next month.



The good news is that there were 3 pieces of glass, and only one broke. This means that we don't have any holes in the house for hot air to come in or cats to escape. Just a mess and some repair work to have done.

It's always something.

Thinking thin - end of week 8

I haven't updated this in a while, mostly because it got boring. After two months, I am down 14 pounds. Pretty close to the two pounds a week I was hoping for and more than I expected. Yeah! I still have a few more to go but feel pretty good about knocking those off by the end of summer.

At that point I switch my goal from weight lose to muscle gain. It would be nice to have lost enough that I could finally have some stomach muscles. I'm no fool. I have no dreams of the ripped six-pack. Perhaps I could shoot for a two-pack of very small muscles. We shall see.

Happenings

Lots of things are stirring around town, and I have been getting off my butt to go be a part.

This is my lovely wife Julie as we walk down into town for $3 fish tacos at Jean Louis'. You just can't beat it for a good deal. Then you have to walk the mile and a half back home (serious uphill) to work off the yummy tacos. We were joined by the Benson's and Jim Covaleski.



Jim, Julie and I did a fairly hard 7 mile hike yesterday. Good exercise, but it wailed on Julie's back. Bummer. This was the first longer hike I have done in a while.

So, back in the groove for hiking and losing weight, Jasper and I took off on a 12 mile hike today. We went over to Park City Mountain Resort and took off to the top of the mountain. A nice view of the valley from about halfway up.



The reason we went over there was to watch the helicopter hauling and pouring concrete. PCMR is putting in a new ski lift and they have to pour some heavy duty footings for the lift towers. This means lots and lots of trips with one bucket of concrete at a time. Fun to watch!



At the end of the hike, the dog collapsed in a heap. I am not far behind him.



The big event for the weekend is the annual Park City Art Festival. About 40,000 people come in for it. We plan to walk down this evening and then probably head back tomorrow morning.

Nothing says big event in Park City like a thousand "no parking" barriers. They're everywhere.



As Jasper and I got our hike started, we saw a few of the artists already getting set up. I thought the big yard art was pretty cool. More pictures from the festival later.