You can find some pictures from our latest hikes at:

http://utahrox.com/Pix%20Albums/Yellow%20Creek%20-%20Oquirrhs/index.html


Fred is working hard on getting our website completed. Its almost done.
There will be videos, pictures, and journal entries.

The past few weeks have been so mild, 50's and 60's with sun. We've done a
lot of hiking and bit of restaurant exploring. This past weekend I got on
a kick to find donuts (no Dunkin Donuts here) for Sunday breakfast (yes,
we deserved a donut since I climbed up Mt. Olympus for 2 hours  on
Saturday!) We started calling around to local coffee shops but nobody had
donuts. But during the search one guy told me 'We don't have donuts but we
have the best view in the valley off our porch!'.  It happened to be about
60 degrees Sunday morning so it sounded like we should settle for whatever
pastry they have, a good cup of coffee so we could sit outside looking out
over the valley.  So I am still on a quest to find a good donut shop.
Krispy Kreme just doesn't do it for me.

Also last weekend, Fred bought himself a new set of skis and all the
trimmings on sale at a local sport store. He wanted desperately to try
them out but didn't want to spend a whole day or pay for a whole lift
ticket so we looked around and found that Alta Ski Resort has FREE skiing
after 3pm everyday. So you can ride one of their smaller lifts for 2 hrs
for free! Such a deal! Plus, its up Little Cottonwood Canyon so it only
takes us 20 min to drive there AND ski rental for me was $9 after 3pm. SO,
we headed up there on Sunday afternoon, arrived about 2:45, parked about 1
block away, got me fitted and were on the lift going up at 3:05!!

Did I tell you I've never skied? Well, I've x-country skied but that's
usually not downhill.  So riding up this lift (which was high speed), I'm
getting a little panicky as I realize how high we are (I have a slight
fear of heights) and where we are headed. Yikes! I started thinking this
might be a little presumptuous of me to think I can just start skiing,
just like that, no lesson, no nothin'. I could feel the tears start in my
eyes and I looked at Fred and said 'I'm scared, what if I fall?' Ha ha! He
said 'you're not gonna fall, just stand up when the lift gets to the top'.
 Easy for him to say! This lift chair was really flying up the hill! He
was right, the last 20 feet the chair slows way down, I stand up and I'm
skiing! Easy as pie.

Anyway, Fred says I'm a natural <grin>   I'm not kidding. It was the
easiest thing I've ever learned. Of course we were only on the green runs
<very big grin>  So now that I am totally addicted, I am scheming on how
to take days off work so I can go on weekdays and avoid the crowds. After
all, we had to wait 5 min in the lift lines on Sunday and that's just so
long, ha ha!  So anyone want to come visit and go skiing? There is skiing
all the way through April at most resorts and some of them have skiing
until July!!

So anyway, our warm weather didn't hold. We had a drop in temps to 25
degrees and a huge white-out storm hit on Wednesday. We literally couldn't
see out the windows at work. There were 95 accidents in Salt Lake County
within 2hrs of the storm hitting. It only lasted about 2 hours and then
cleare out but it dumped 4 inches of snow downtown and 2 feet in the
mountains. So tonight Fred and I are going to try night skiing!  We got a
Freeloader pass from a local radio station and the two of us can ski from
5 to 9p for the price of one. $27!!  They have 22 runs lit for night. I
will be leaving work early and renting my skis from REI for $8.
Unbelievable.

Maybe we can take some video and post it on our site!

more next week...

Liz
p.s. Attaching a pic of me and Janai tubing! Load of fun!