On June 2, 2018 Jesse and I celebrated our 6 year wedding anniversary. Our first was spent in Raleigh, NC, our second we were in two different states – I was in Indiana and he was still in NC closing up the townhouse. The third we went to a restaurant in South Dakota during an huge storm and they lost power; we still had a nice time though. The fourth was at Max’s at Mirabeau in Spokane, Washington and the fifth was spent in GA with Jesse’s mom and other family at The Bone Island Grillhouse where we enjoyed wonderful company and a wonderful meal. We always try to do fun and/or romantic stuff for our anniversary. Here in Utah we went out for a lovely dinner and went for a crazy hard hike.
Our dinner was at Log Haven which is a “historic log mansion in the Wasatch National Forest” and it is a beautiful place. It is also a wedding venue and across the road from the restaurant is a rather pretty waterfall. Since we went in June and the snow was still melting the waterfall was very pretty but I think it dries up when all the snow is gone. I did make an error and did not make a reservation and it was a Saturday. The place is only open from 5:30pm and we probably got there about 5:45 and it was packed already. We got lucky and were able to get a table. It is such a great log cabin. It used to be owned by a steel baron that had it built as a gift for his wife. It is up the windy road that goes through Millcreek Canyon and good thing we brought the Jeep since we had to park on the side of the road. We had drinks, appetizer, dinner and dessert and it was wonderful. We ended up spending few hours there eating and talking. I hope to go back again sometime soon.
And since we did so much eating we decided a hike would be a good idea. We picked the hike to Lake Blanche. Jesse picked up a great book one day that has 60 hikes within 60 miles of Salt Lake City. This is very helpful since it describes the trails as easy, moderate or hard and also gives distance, time it should take and if dogs are allowed. Lake Blanche is in Big Cottonwood Canyon which is a protected watershed so no dogs are allowed; that is of course perfect for Jesse. I am happy with it too since way too many people let their dogs off leash and you just don’t know if they are going to be nice.
We got up early since this is a pretty long hike and most of it is very steep. There is even a part where you have to climb over some rather large boulders. I was worried about rattlesnakes most of the time but thankfully we did not see any. The lake itself is at an elevation of 8,920 and behind it is Sundial Peak which makes for a great picture. Even in June there was quite a bit of snow and the waterfall was very powerful. There are several other lakes in the area and it used to be source for water so it had a dam at both ends; they are now mostly in disrepair since it has not been used in that fashion since the early 1900s. It was a very challenging hike and since I had not fully acclimated to the thinner air I was struggling quite a bit. I was proud of myself for making it all the way to the destination. The hike down was obviously much faster and we saw quite a few people heading up to the lake. We gave some words of encouragement and told them it was worth the effort.
We have done a few other hikes here in Utah. The first one Jesse took me on after I moved here is Living Room. It is not to far from where I work and it is called this because rocks at the top have been arranged to look like loveseats, sofas and chairs. You can sit up there and view the valley below. It is pretty neat. We also hiked most of the way to Grandeur Peak. It is a pretty long hike and we didn’t quite make it to the summit. We were hungry and did not bring enough food and we also got a late start. The views were pretty stunning though and the mountains were still covered in snow. After hiking down we were very hungry so we stopped at this really cool taco place called Lone Star Taqueria, sat outside and had some fabulous tacos. What was even crazier is that when we got home we saw them on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network!
I am slowly getting used to exerting myself here in Utah. I even started from scratch with my running by downloading the Couch to 5K app and the Bridge to 10K that I used when I first started running. It seems to have helped quite a bit. I am looking forward to more hiking and hopefully then running in the mountains.
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