Provo Falls and Mirror Lake

We started the morning today with a walk on the Heber Overlook trail. It had nice views of both the Heber Valley and the backside of Mount Timpanogas!

 Afterwards, Renee and I ran over to Weight Watchers. We both had successful weigh-ins and enjoyed meeting a bunch of nice ladies in Heber!

In the afternoon we went for a nice drive, stopping off at Provo Falls. They were beautiful, and it was fun to see something we had never seen before.

The falls had two sections, an upper and a lower. The layered rock formations made them particularly interesting!

Our ultimate goal was Mirror Lake, where we took a walk around the perimeter (about a mile and a half). It is the highest lake in Utah, at 9500 feet!

There were some very pretty wildflowers, most of which I did not recognize. My favorite was this very pretty fireweed!

We had dinner at the Heber City Cafe/Galilee Grill. It was a strange combination of western burgers and middle eastern cuisine. But, happily, they were both fresh and well prepared!

We played a little pickleball, but had to give up when the wind got too strong. We were just able to batten our hatches before it got really windy and started to rain!  We holed up in our tent trailer and watched Netflix while I blogged! Can you really call it camping when you have both Wi-Fi and Internet connections?

Fancy Camping

One of the perks at staying in an RV resort is you don't have to build your own bonfire! We had fun singing campfire songs last night around a gaslit fire!

The evening started with some gourmet mesquite barbecued pork chops by Chuck!

  The dogs are getting along great, (which means Coda hasn't snapped at anyone)!

I brought everyone a stress spinner to see if we could figure out what the big deal is. We tried a few tricks from YouTube, and failed miserably!

We ended the evening with a few games of tile rummy, which somehow were all won by Ed! Luck or skill? You be the judge!

Last week of Summer in Heber City

 We joined the Nortons at the Moutnain Valley RV Resort outside Heber City yesterday. It's only an hour from Alpine, but it's a different world! They have two swimming pools, and the new one is adults only, so it was very peaceful!

It would have been even more peaceful if we could have left our dog in the trailer. She has a tendency to bark when we leave her, so we tied her up outside the pool, where she was perfectly good!

The Nortons' dog Okie is very well behaved, and never barks at all!

This is our first experience camping in a resort. There aren't as many trees as the National Forest, but it has lots of amenities (and showers) to make up for it!

I made dinner last night and got to use our new stove and oven. It takes a while learning how everything in the tent trailer works!

We're only a mile from Walmart, which was handy because we ran over last night to buy an anti-bark collar for Coda.

It did the trick, and now we have three well-behaved dogs at our campsite. (Although one of them is a little upset with mom and dad.)

This morning we taught Chuck and Renee how to play pickleball. They have great potential and Renee and I made a great team! (I won't boast about who won our doubles game.)

In the afternoon we went snorkeling/soaking at Homestead Crater in Midway. The crater was created by a mineral spring that feeds it from below, so the water was 97 degrees! There wasn't much to see with the snorkels, but it was just nice floating in the warm water!

There is a hole at the top of the crater, where the sun came through. It must be nice to come here in the winter and take a soak while the snow is falling in!

Afterwards we climbed the stairs to see the view from the top of the crater.

It has some nice views of the Heber Valley, which is a combination of farms and resorts. They seem like strange bedfellows.

If you look closely, you can see Renee down below taking our picture from the base of the crater !

Mabel's Birthday Party

For Mabel's 2nd birthday, we went to the petting zoo at Thanksgiving Point. She got to ride a horse all by herself! She loved it so much that she did it twice!

With two sets of grandparents there, there were plenty of laps for the kids to sit on during the tractor ride!

Clementine is too young to pet a goat, but she was pretty intrigued by them, anyway!

Mabel loved touching the animals when they came up to the fence!

We enjoyed seeing the turkeys, chickens and other fowl!

Calvin, his parents and grandparents joined us at the Nuttall's afterwards for the party.

Mabel was the guest of honor and got to sit at the head of the table!

Brittany made a beautiful strawberry cake for her. With a little encouragement, she was able to blow out one of the two candles!

She took to present opening like a pro! She got such great gifts that it was difficult not to stop and play with each one before moving on to the next one!

The hit of the evening was the crawling tube. Mabel and Calvin crawled through it over and over till they were hot and sweaty!

Mabel cooled off with a little fun on Grandma Nuttall's ZAAZ wiggle machine!

What a happy 2 year old birthday for Mabel!

New Ford Truck

Ed and I bought a new truck today After some research and several test drives we ended up preferring the Ford F-150, the best selling truck in American 40 years in a row! We got a 2017 XLT instead of a used car, because the year end rebates were so attractive!

We bought the lightening blue truck in Spanish Fork and dropped by to to take mom for a drive and go out to lunch together at Zuppas.

We were surprised on our walk through to find a fancy tail-gate assist for people who are not limber enough to scramble up in the back of the truck.

We got a few extras on the truck, including a navigation system and power seats, (but, sadly, no garage door opener Homelink). I look forward to taking it off road, but Ed doesn't want to bang it up or get it dirty!

Climbing to the Boulders on East Mountain

There is a set of about 8 large rocks midway up the mountains east of our house. They look like ogre's molars in the middle of the hillside. Or Alpine's own little Stonehenge!

Rumor has it the young people in Alpine used to climb up to them on Easter morning.

This morning I was taking pictures of the new scrub oaks growing after the fire in July. Ed pointed up and said, "Look there are the boulders!" That sounded like an invitation to climb up to them!

We thought we might as well do it now while we're young(ish)! It won't be any easier next year! We took it easy going up, but it quickly became very steep!

It was rocky and there was no path, so we had to tread carefully going up!

The biggest rock looked like it was 20 feet high! It was about a mile and a half from our house, but felt like another world!

We felt a real sense of accomplishment when we reached the boulders. We'd been looking at them for months, thinking, "...one of these days..."

The view of the valley below and Utah Lake in the background was spectacular!

We tried to find a safer way to go down, but alas, ended up going down as slow as possible, not to end up tripping and rolling down the hill! It was frightening! Happily we made it safely down!

We were surprised to find 7 or 8 patches of our old nemesis, myrtle spurge, growing on the hillside northwest of the boulders! The Forest Service it trying to eradicate it, as it is an invasive species! Myrtle spurge is much more adaptive than Ed and Judy Bush!

Coda's First Grooming

Coda went to the dog groomers for the first time yesterday. It took 3 hours to get 7 years worth of neglect remedied! She looked so respectable afterwards! We were so pleased with the results that we might start doing this on a regular basis!

Last Day with Mabel and Clementine

We had one last day with the grand-kids before their mom and dad dropped by to pick them up. We had fun singing "Old MacDonald" with every puppet. Who knew he had penguins on his farm?

Clementine is 6 1/2 months old and is getting so interactive! She loves to be part of the action!

She enjoyed having us put bowls on her head as much as we did!

Now that Mabel is two she is fearless on the slide! It was fun watching her go down it over and over!

We moved a bench up under a tree so it was more comfortable for us to watch Mabel on the swing set.

Afterwards she relaxed on our patio swing with grandpa!

Mabel loved going through grandma's closet and trying on all the shoes-even high heels!

We waited on the front porch till mom and dad showed up about noon.

They had a joyful reunion! It turned out Mabel missed her parents more than she realized. We celebrated by going out to lunch at the Pizza Pie Cafe!

Brittany and John had a great time in the Tetons backpacking with Eli and Lacy and watching the eclipse from the top of the mountains. We were glad we could help them make that happen.