Moonlight Snowshoe

Rosey and I did a moonlight snowshoe to Stuart Falls last night after work. It was really incredible. There was probably 2 feet of fresh snow and we were the first people to lay tracks in it. I love being the first person to snowshoe a trail after fresh snow :) It was kind of cold, but we were OK as long as we kept moving. It wasn't until we got back to the car that we realized exactly how cold it was. My car reported the outside temperature as being -6 degrees F. Wow!

Bastard Coated Bastards with Bastard Filling

My favorite line from a Scrubs episode, ever:

Lady, people aren't chocolates. D'you know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling. But I don't find them half as annoying as I find naive bobble-headed optimists who walk around vomiting sunshine.

From "My Common Enemy", Scrubs Season 4.

God, I love this show :)

Blogger Upgrade

I've just updated my blog to use Blogger Beta. Will it make a difference? We'll see :)

Little Wild Horse Canyon

I felt like a kid again this weekend... only not necessarily in a good way. When I was young, my family liked to go to the beach frequently. I, however, detested the idea of going to the beach. It was just never what I wanted to do and I would spend hours lamenting how cruel and torturous my oppressors (i.e. family members) were for dragging me along.

But somehow, once I got to the beach I loved it. I could spend hours playing in the sand and waves. In fact, I loved it so much that when it came time to leave, I would lament how cruel and torturous my oppressors were for dragging me away from the place that I loved so much.

Well, it turns out that I'm still something of a child :)

This weekend, what Rosey really wanted to do was to hike in Little Wild Horse Canyon in the San Rafael Swell. It wasn't so much that I didn't want to go, but this was just an inconvenient weekend. It was cold and I was certain that the hiking would be miserable. Besides I was still feeling lazy from the gluttony of Thanksgiving. Wouldn't it be better to just hang around the house the weekend? Did we really need to drag our asses all the way across the state to do some hiking?

But, I could see how important it was for Rosey to get out this weekend. Admittedly, it didn't take a lot of insight. She actually said the words, "Dan this is really important to me" :) And so, we headed down to the swell; she with enthusiasm and me with reluctance.

In the true spirit of my childhood beach experiences, once we got there I was mesmerized. Little Wildhorse Canyon ranks among one of the coolest places that I've ever been to in Utah. And considering how many really cool places I've been in Utah, that's really saying something.

We hiked 9 miles (or so) through two canyons: Bell Canyon and Little Wildhorse Canyon. In some spots the canyon was so narrow that there was barely just enough room to squeeze our bodies through. I believe that these are referred to as slot canyons, since the water carves down through the rocks so sharply that it only leaves a slot behind. After 4 hours of spectacular hiking, I can't say that I was begging to stay longer, but I did have a really enjoyable day and was extremely glad that Rosey talked me into going.


The rest of the pictures are here.

The Big Three O

Happy birthday to me! I'm 30 years old today. Creepy... although not as creepy as I thought it would be. I think that it helps that I'm happy with my life right now. I have a wonderful girlfriend, a good job, a nice house, a new car, a recently repaired harley, and I'm in the best shape of my life. Things could definitely be worse :)

The Entertainer

I have been taking piano lessons for a little over 10 months now and I am one song away from completing my first level piano book. I just passed-off my second-to-last song last night, "The Entertainer". Here is an MP3 of me playing that song:

The Entertainer

Unfortunately, it's not a perfect copy. I kind of screw up at the very end, but I got most of it right and I didn't feel like re-recording :)

My last song is, "Amazing Grace". Hopefully, I will have it mastered in the next week or so.

Two Weekends in the Swell

I've been really lazy about posting about my weekend adventures to my blog lately. So, here is a post to kind of catch things up. Rosey has a more detail on her blog.

Radioactive Mountain Biking
Last weekend Rosey and I were on our way down to Moab to do some mountain biking when we saw a dirt road off of Hwy 6 that looked like it led to some cool rock formations in the distance. With hardly a moment's hesitation we scrapped our Moab plans, pulled onto the dirt road and decided to go exploring. We had hoped to be able to explore by car for a while but the previous weeks heavy rainfall had washed out the infrequently travelled dirt road and made it impassable. Good thing we had our mountain bikes.



We ended up doing about 25 miles of mountain biking in an area that was either in or just outside of the border of the San Rafael Swell. As we were riding and exploring we stumbled onto some old mines. The only thing that I had ever heard of people mining in this area was Uranium but I was surprised not to see any radioactive signs, although all of the mine pits were surrounded by 10 foot high chain link fences. It wasn't until we got a little further down the road that we discovered the sign pictured above warning about the radioactive mines.

The rest of the pictures are here.

Black Dragon Canyon (almost)
We didn't get enough of a taste of the San Rafael Swell last weekend so we decided to head back this weekend for some more. We chose a spot just off of I-70 from a book that we got about the swell. The area was called Black Dragon Canyon. Unfortunately, the mile markers had changed since the book was published and no longer matched the directions. So, we spent a good half-an-hour driving back and forth on I-70 looking for the dirt road with a swinging fence.



I'm not sure that we ever really made it into Black Dragon Canyon. We explored several really cool smaller canyons and climbed over a bunch of slick-rock, but we ran out of time before we could get into Black Dragon Canyon itself. So, I guess we'll have to come back for yet another adventure in the swell.

The rest of the pictures are here.