For the last few years, my family has made a tradition of going to the Uintah Mountains on July 4th. This was where I, as a child, first learned to love the mountains, forest, meadow, and fishing. It's wonderful to see that, nearly 30 years later, my father hasn't changed much, although the little girl has.
Kevin and I have finally put the finishing touches on our bedroom. One new design is that we've placed our own nature photography in frames around our bedroom. Here's a preview.
And here's video I took last week of one of my most nostalgic places, a meadow in the "Winters," (Uintas--see personal essay posted earlier). This is one of my family's favorite spots, and it's very close to mirror lake. I first learned to fish here, and it's not more than 3/4 miles from the road to the meadow, so it's something even very little kids could enjoy, which got me hooked on this area of wilderness early on.
This video doesn't have the quality I wanted either--I moved the camera around too fast so it didn't really focus. Apparently something I was doing was making weird clicks as well.
Kevin and I celebrated our country's independence last week by going on a picnic with my family in the Uintas. Despite my attempts to get some pictures of me and Kevin at Mirror Lake, it wasn't meant to be. Our camera setting for some reason kept appearing mysteriously on video, and even after we adjusted it, we kept shooting video. Oh well.
Here's a video of Mirror Lake that I took on purpose:
I'm pretty sure the quality is not the best--my family was discussing that there's a reason video doesn't take up as much memory as expected on a regular digital camera. However, the unplanned audio of my family members makes me laugh. It's very typical.
In the last month or so, I haven't had much chance to go far away to hike, and July is not necessarily my favorite time to hike my favorite places in the Southern Utah desert, but I have been able to get away for an hour or two to the nearby canyons.
Near the end of June, I went with a neighbor and some of her friends up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Lake Mary. It's a supposedly short hike, and I'd done it before years ago, but the beginning of the trail had changed, and there was a lot of snow and flodded meadows, so things looked different. We overshot the trail a little bit and ended up approaching the lake from the east, but it was beautiful. The shutters of my camera weren't open all the way, hence the blocked view.
The weekend before the 4th of July holiday Kevin and I went up to the Uintas with my dad to go on a trail past Scout and Pass lakes. I love this hike. It was perfect for a July afternoon--short
enough and high enough to produce pleasant temperatures. In just 3.5 miles, this loop trail takes hikers through forests, past several lakes and streams, above the timberline (where there were still plenty of ice fields), through high wildflower meadows, and through lower grassy meadows. It's a great way for me to enjoy most of the things I love about the Uintas in an afternoon, and it doesn't have switchbacks, of which I've become less fond during my mountain backbacking trips.
This weekend Kevin and I went to Albion Basin to see the wildflowers in bl
oom. This is where I learned to ski, and it still takes me back to my childhood to go up there and see the lift to Sugar Loaf, my favorite ski run, and the way to Cecret Lake. There are so many beautiful wildflowers this time of year.
