Beach Time

On Sunday evening and Monday my Dad and I cruised around checking out beached. I love the beach, my Dad, not so much, but he was a super good sport about it. Keep in mind however, I was subjected to evening TV viewing of shows like Castle and NCIS. All's fair....

Are You Ready for Some Football?

I love sports. I've had the chance to see professional baseball, basketball, soccer, and hockey live and in person. The only thing I hadn't experienced was pro football. Yesterday I remedied that. I'm down in Tampa on business this week but was able to come down a few days earlier to spend some time with my Dad. Once he heard that I hadn't ever been to an NFL game he went out and bought us tickets for the Bucs vs Steelers game at Raymond James Stadium.

Tickets are outrageously expensive, parking...forget about it. But despite all that, there is something indescribable about getting caught up in the excitement of experiencing a game live. We chatted with everyone sitting around us. The couple in front of us have season tickets and they drive three hours each way from Ft. Meyers to attend the game. That is dedication, folks!

The Bucs have a big rivalry with the Steelers and it seemed that half the stadium was filled with Steelers fans waving their 'terrible towels'. The Bucs started out strong with an interception but that excitement was quickly extinguished by the Steeler domination that followed. In summary, the Bucs experiences an old-fashioned a$$-whooping. Despite the outcome, I had a great time at the game and loved the excitement of seeing a game in person. Perhaps if the Bears keep it up, I'll have to plan a trip to Chicago to see them play at Soldier Field!

Island Park

A few weekends ago, we had the opportunity to visit our friend's cabin in Island Park, Idaho. I've written about how much I love it up there several times now. This trip will go down as the 'Wildlife Adventure' weekend. First of all, let me introduce you to my little friend Peanut. We bonded over the weekend. Not only was he curious about what I was working on on my computer, the next day he crawled right up my leg. That is where I drew the line.

Later that evening, we were sitting on the deck enjoying the beautiful surroundings when suddenly a bald eagle landed atop of the tree right in front of us. It was HUGE! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera handy so I can't prove it.

The next day we decided to visit the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. You can get more information here. There was a lovely campground right next to this lake. Next time, I want to bring a canoe and explore the lake that way.

The funniest part of the this adventure was after driving 15 minutes along a dirt road on the way to the wildlife refuge, we saw one house and this sign post in front of it. Utes fans will think of my friend Kylee's mom, aka Crazy Lady, the Utes super fan. It would be awesome to build a cabin up there.

On our last evening we were sitting on the dock watching the sunset when across the reservoir we spotted a moose with her two babes approaching the edge of the water. Ban ran inside to grab the binoculars (you'd think we'd learn to bring them to the dock with us, right?). While I was watching all three moose entered the water and swam across the reservoir! They exited the water a few cabins down from us. I had no idea that they could swim like that. Another fantastic weekend at the cabin. Thanks Liz! xoxo

Hike From Hell: Alexander Basin

It's taken me two weeks to recover from the PTSD of this hike and be able to write about it. It was a lovely Sunday morning and I decided that I wanted to go for a hike up Millcreek Canyon. Ban was game to go along and we decided to do a hike we hadn't done before. We decided to do Dog Lake and made our way to the top of Millcreek. Approximately, a thousand other people had the same idea. The parking lot was crawling with cars, people, dogs, and cyclists (yeah, cyclists get their own category because they were particularly obnoxious on this morning). We went back down the canyon to the overflow parking and it too was packed.

So, Plan B. We decided to head down the canyon to find a trail head with an available parking lot. Alexander Basin trail was the first one we found. It was steep. I mean really, really steep. Steep like my glutes ached for days afterward. Once we finally stopped climbing and the trail flattened out a bit we were treated to a beautiful display of wild flowers. We only passed a couple of people during the whole hike. Seriously, it was so steep, did I mention that? As we neared the top, we did run into a girl that Ban and I had gone to school with and neither of us had since since. Random. All the photos posted here were taken prior to this part of the hike.

Once we reached the basin, we could see that Gobbler's Knob was just a little bit further. Note to self: it always seems 'just a little bit further' when in fact it was a long way off. We climbed up a rock slide and as we made it nearly to the top we heard a loud clap of thunder that seemingly came from nowhere. Ban says 'How do you feel about that?'. I didn't feel good about that at all! I started hauling ass back down the trail. Suddenly, we felt a smattering of rain drops accompanied by more thunder and lightening. But, the worst was yet to come, pea-sized hail started pelting us and the rain and hail made the very steep trail super slick and muddy. It took us over an hour to decent. I'm sorry that I didn't get any pictures of what we looked like by the time we reached our car.

No need to lecture about all the things we did wrong. We know. But, all's well that ends well, right?