More SLC fun at Snowbird!

On Sunday, we decided to check out another canyon near Salt Lake City- Little Cottonwood.  We drove up to the ski resort Snowbird because you can ride their tram during the summer. The tram is A.) NOT the same as a gondola and B.) a great way to get a good panorama of the Wasatch range. We rode up the top and checked it out.  Scott was eager to point out all the best skiing stashes. We're both pretty excited to come back here in the winter!

We also spent most of the day Sunday preparing for our 5-day backpacking trip in Wyoming.  This included a trip to REI, lots of food bagging, and, as you can see below, toilet paper rationing.  As you read this, we will be enjoying the sights of the Wind River Range! (with hopefully enough toilet paper)

We really enjoyed our time in Salt Lake City.  Special shout-out to Kate for being a great hostess and showing us around your new city!  We look forward to coming back for ski season!

Uintas Backpacking with Kate

On Friday morning, Kate, Shannon, and I headed to the Uintas for a quick weekend of backpacking.  The Uintas are a mountain range East of Salt Lake City especially noted for being (generally) the only East-West range in the Continental United States (basically all other ranges run North-South).  I'm... not really sure why that matters, but it's a fun fact.  The range is also one of the highest in Utah and our hike started at nearly 10,000 feet.  Here's Kate and Shannon ready for action.

We passed a beautiful Long Lake on our way to Island Lake (about 4 miles) where we setup camp for the evening.  Beautiful swimming and sunset photography ensued (click the photos for bigger versions).

 

Our night at Island was calm and we woke up and completed a loop on the way out including a few more lakes (Duck Lake, Pot Lake, and Weir Lake).  All beautiful in Uinta fashion.

Once back to the car and eventually the city, the three of us set our sights on the Red Iguana in Salt Lake City for some of the best Mexican food around.  After our Mexican food disaster by the Grand Canyon, we can say we've seen a full spectrum of the genre (from really bad to this really good).  We enjoyed a sampler of all the mole sauce options.  Highly recommended if you're ever in Salt Lake.  It was a great way to cap off the backpacking weekend!

Ooootah - Return to the Mountains

We arrived in Utah on Wednesday night where we are staying with Kate (my sister) who recently moved here.  On Thursday we caught up a bit on "life stuff" (I guess... we still have bills?) before deciding it was time to hit the hills.  One of the best parts of Salt Lake City is the access to the mountains and after a quick half hour drive up Big Cottonwood Canyon, we hiked a tough mile to Lake Mary.  It felt great to be back in the mountains enjoying the incredible scenery here in the Wasatch.

 

After our hike we headed back to SLC and had some Thai food... we've missed that type of cuisine the last few weeks.  It was pioneer day (info here) in SLC so we even managed to catch some fireworks before heading home to pack for a backpacking trip with Kate into the Uinta Mountain Range on Friday/Saturday.

Badlands... Mt. Rushmore... Type 2 Weather...

We had a very busy Tuesday exploring Badlands National Park and Mt. Rushmore.

Badlands is an area where wind and water has eroded away at a big elevation step in the plains and left some really cool "mini mountains."  The thing I really enjoyed about this was the contrast.  In one spot you have verdant green grass-land and then off a little cliff you have desert spines and ridges.

The grasslands themselves in this area are green, rolling, and beautiful... among the best we've seen (unlike boring Southern Wyoming)

We hit the road to the Black Hills and eventually Mt. Rushmore.  Mt. Rushmore is about as American as it comes and you would be pretty hard pressed to not feel patriotic here.  One thing I didn't expect was how much I appreciated the sculpture as art.  I can't imagine the effort required to make granite look so smooth and realistic.  We have better close-up photos, but I thought the below better characterized the nature of the patriotism of the place (those are the 50 state flags).

We drove through South Dakota's Black Hills next.  It was very refreshing to be back in mountains and this drive is pretty awesome with a handful of really neat one-lane tunnels and bridges.

 

We found a good campsite by Custer State Park and watched and listened to thunder and lightning sloooowly approach.  We managed to eat dinner before a pounding hail storm came through.  Much of the hail was between dime and quarter sized.  Yikes.  Later in the night we would be awakened by a similar storm but our tent performed wonderfully and we're dry, happy, and now in Salt Lake City after a day of driving.

A few notes from the road and Wall Drug....

Wall Drug is a pretty fascinating place.  It's basically a case study in marketing and buisness.  By putting sign after sign after sign on a very boring part of I-90 and handing out hundreds of free bumper stickers, almost a third of the traffic on I-90 stops at this gigantic store full of... trinkets.  The lesson here?  All you need to do to collect tourist attention is be a little more interesting than your surroundings.  This may not be so hard if you live in South Dakota.  Although being the gateway to Badlands National Park (more notes on that in the next post) probably helps.

 

 

 

Minnesota!

After our week in Annawan, it was time to hit the road.  We drove the Jetta (which we have started referring to as "the house") north to Minneapolis/St. Paul where our good friends Bitta and Preston live.  I can't forget about Adeline, the latest Clark family addition.  At 11 months old, she's already a super fun and mischievous kid.  Here's the whole fam:

We had a great weekend filled with lots of relaxing, great food, and lots of board and euchre games.  One of the cool things we checked out was Como Zoo.  They had a pretty good ape exhibit and the mountain lion was the highlight.  They're so mysterious to us with minimal sightings in the wild (compared to say, bears) but we know they're out there. Scary.

 

We also walked around Lake of Isles, a beautiful park area in Minneapolis.  We really enjoyed watching many Minnesotans canoe and kayak on the lake... seems like if we lived around here a water-craft would be in order.

 

Throughout the entire trip, Bitta and Preston impressed us with their culinary skills.  I enjoyed learning some new things like how to properly trim broccoli, cabbage, and to make refried beans.  Bitta and Preston alerted us that our blog is starting look like a foodie blog... well, we've been visiting family and in the Mid-West so, that's what you get!  Here's a photo of the nachos we made with our homemade refried beans.

Today we drove to Wall, South Dakota (yes, the home of Wall Drug) and tomorrow we'll check-out Badlands National Park.  After more than 2 weeks of really slow travel, we're about to get back into the swing of road trippin'!       

Small Town Illinois Part 2

 We recently completed our visit in Annawan, but not without a few last adventures!  One of which was getting to ride in my parents' RV.  We have spent some time in the RV, but haven't been able to ride in it.  So, my dad, Scott and I set off for a little joy ride through the country. The RV has quite a view from the front window, as seen in the picture.  Scott even got a turn to drive the RV and successfully returned it back to its home at the farm.

Another exciting thing that happened is that Scott got to see a crop-duster in action.  These low flying planes used to terrorize my childhood dreams since I thought they were always going to fly into our house.  Scott thought crop dusters were like... 100 feet above the corn, nope they zip just feet above the fields.

On Thursday night, we enjoyed a minor league baseball game in Davenport.  The River Bandits is the name of the local team, and the stadium is right on the banks of the Mississippi.  Things I like about minor league baseball games:  1.) You can have great seats for so cheap. 2.) There are always cool gimmicks and games to keep you entertained at the park. Example: this park has a giant Ferris wheel!  3.) Free giveaways. As you can see by the pictures, this night it was a free hat.  All in all, we had a great time at the ballpark!

After the game we headed to my favorite ice cream place in the area- Whitey's.  The thing about Whitey's is that I always get Bubble Gum ice cream.  That's right....they do serve it to people over the age of 10.  Every year I think I'm too old and every year I am wrong.  Still delicious. 

Annawan was a great stop for us.  Mainly because, and this has always been true, the pace of life is so slow. After living in a city for several years, it was refreshing to be somewhere that wasn't so hectic all the time.  Scott and I were able to do some advance planning for other parts of our trip, spend quality time with my family, and relax. Until next time, Annawan... 

Small Town Illinois

We've been able to spend the last few days in my (Shannon) hometown of Annawan, Illinois. For those who are unfamiliar with my upbringing, Annawan is a town of 900 located in western Illinois. (Dangerously close to Iowa...)  I spent most of my young life dreaming of the day I would leave this little town, but there's nothing I love more than going back to visit.

One of the great things about Annawan is that my family has a pool. On a farm. I've spent many a hot, summer day cooling off in this pool surrounded by cornfields.

We also got in a visit to Johnson's State Park (near Annawan). The unique feature of the park is Ryan's Round Barn.  Of particular interest on this visit was to see a bench that has recently been built in honor of my cousin, Ryan, who passed away in 2011. The quote on the bench reads: "Those we love don't go away. They sit beside us every day."

Today we took a day trip to "the Cities", as the locals call it. That's the Quad Cities, everyone. As a child, this is where I went to do things like go to the mall, the movies, or Applebee's. You get the idea. We checked out a local brewery in Davenport called Front Street Brewery. We even got an 8 for the price of 6 beer flight. Good stuff!

Back on the IL side, in Moline, we got in a visit to John Deere Pavilion. John Deere began operations in Moline way back in the day.  In the Pavilion, we got to see past and present machines. Scott was very interested in the abundant engineering opportunities, while I read up on the historical significance of John Deere.  The guy began his operation with a polished steel plow!  Seems pretty simple, but was revolutionary in the agricultural world.

We'll be enjoying Annawan for a few more days before moving on to our next adventure!

On the road again... Sandy Pond to Annawan

On Thursday (July 10th) it was time to (sadly) hit the road again.  It was a bit hard to leave the Lake, but the time had come...  We took two days to drive to Annawan, Illinois (Shannon's home town).

The first day we had an easy drive to just west of Cleveland to a state park on East Harbor which is attached to Lake Erie.  This campground had over 500 campsites and the mass of campers were impressive but suprisngly not in an annoying way... everybody was just happily enjoying a warm Mid-Western night on the lake.  A great scene of summer.

We drove over to Marblemount Lighthouse as the sun was setting and checked out the views:

 

The next morning we got ready to hit the road but not before noticing a small army of daddy-long-legs all over our tent.  We don't see these at all in the Pacific Northwest, in some sort of weird way, I missed them.  This one was on the outside of our tent:

We hit the road to Annawan and made our highly anticipated stop at Cheddars for lunch.  Cheddars (which is basically an Applebees) is one of few places in the country that makes a Monte Cristo sandwich by deep frying it instead of just using French toast.  This is something that I really love... I was pretty pumped:

 

A few hours later, we made it to Annawan, where will we spend the next week with the Peart clan!

More Sandy Pond Happenings

We continued to hang out and enjoy the Sandy Pond environs with family after the 4th of July until this past Thursday.  Our time was a blur of relaxing and just hanging out with the family.  We hit the beach a few times, went out to Sackett's Harbor for dinner, explored up "the creek", played some bocce ball, and relaxed.  Easy to do with scenes like this:

 

We celebrated my Dad's 61st birthday on the trip.  Happy Birthday Dad!  He celebrated in style with a really strong water ski run.  Water skiing is far from an old-man's game, so awesome to see Dad still getting after it.

Good times at the Lake with these good people! 

 

Sandy Pond 4th of July!

After a good day in Cincinnati, we headed North to Sandy Pond.  Sandy Pond is essentially the hub of the Youmans/Whipple families.  My great-grandparents (on both sides) built cottages on Greene Point on Sandy Pond long ago.  My parents both grew up spending weekends here in their lake houses which are about 400 feet (?) apart.

When I was a kid, I'd come to Sandy Pond for 5 weeks (or more) in the summers and on big holidays most of the family is here.  This year was of course no exception and we were able to see Aunt Maureen and Uncle Bob, Chris (cousin) and Lindsay, Aunt Linda, Amy, Grandpa Whipple and Grandma Youmans so far.

We started out our 4th of July weekend on Thursday with a trip to the Oswego County Fair.  Oswego County is mostly rural and their Fair includes many barns of livestock competitions and, more importantly, a demolition derby.  We always enjoy the carnage of this event:

 

After the derby was over, we played a handful of fair games.  A bit of skee-ball and a racing game between Dad, Shannon, and I.  Shannon took the victory...

 

On the 4th of July we had a big family breakfast complete with pancakes, eggs, and bacon at the Whipple cottage.  This is delicious in part due to the fact that we have a cast-iron griddle that is rumored to have been seasoning for 100 years.  It's also delicious because Uncle Bob/Aunt Maureen are great cooks.  Lastly, it's delicious because we put hotdogs in the pancakes.  All I'll say about this is, don't knock it till you try it.

 

It was a bit cold so we hung around the house and inevitably ended up at another big family meal... the spiedie meal complete with baked beans, potato salad, and spiedies.  Spiedies are a little hard to explain... here's the wikipedia. 

 

 After essentially gourging ourselves all day, we enjoyed a rainbow to cap off a beautiful 4th of July.

Cincinnati!

We're a bit overdue in updates... I suppose Shannon and I decided to take the 4th of July holiday weekend from the blog?  Happy Birthday America!

Last Monday we drove from Memphis to Cincinnati.  I (Scott) grew up in Cincinnati so this was a pretty big homecoming for me as I hadn't been there in 3(ish?) years.  A lot of our family time is at Sandy Pond in New York (where we are now) so Cincinnati hadn't been a priority with our working schedules.

First, we met Shannon's friend Abby and went out for some BBQ and then a game of bocce in Washington Park.

 

I learned a lot about Cincinnati in the brief 24 hours we were there.

Living in the burbs when I grew up up probably meant I didn't see the "hip" parts of Cincinnati (sorry Mom and Dad).  And (surprisingly) there are some hip parts of Cincinnati.  I also should have known, but was surprised to see that Cincinnati is changing rapidly.  We ate at a place with a live DJ, saw an adult kickball league in Washington Park downtown (which has revitalized itself substantially since the 2001 riots), and saw a handful of taco trucks.  Seeing Cincinnati through an "adult" lens definitely made it look a lot different... and better than I expected.  

Here's a picture of the fountains at Washington Park, these folks are having good ol' fashioned fun.  This wasn't a part of town you'd really want to hang out in 10-15 years ago.

 

On Tuesday we headed to Kings Island to continue reliving my childhood.  Kings Island is a fully blown roller coaster stuffed amusement park that's only about 20 minutes away from my house.  I remember a lot of really good times going with my Dad at night (after the tourists left).

 

Kings Island has changed a bit too with a handful of new rides including this year's called Banshee.  We rode it... and it was fantastic.  It's the longest inverted roller coaster in the world.  We're not really sure how that's measured... but ok!

 

It was a hot day and so we also enjoyed a few water rides including once called Whitewater Canyon.  On the exit trail you could pay a quarter to shoot water at people riding the ride below you.  It's the simple joys in life.... and I was a little surprised at how happy and vicious Shannon was soaking the thrill-seekers below.

 

We rode a lot of of other Kings Island classics like the Beast, Vortex, Top Gun, etc.  Good times and we left with the usual hot, sticky, and tired feeling you get at amusement parks.

I dragged Shannon to Penn Station a local sub chain for dinner with Aunt Linda, and my cousins Amy and Jeff.   Penn Station is sort of like Quiznos... we're not talking about fancy.  But I miss it and it was fantastic.  And it hadn't changed at all.  

Cincinnati and Kings Island, you can change, but not you Penn Station, not you.