Hiking at 9 months

We've been saying for the last few weeks that we needed to go on a hike, do another BBQ, and eat outside under our new (new to us...) shade umbrella. Well, today we were able to do all of that with a few twists thrown in to make it interesting. Since there have been a few really hot and dry weeks, the forest service decided to close all of the hiking trails. I guess the reason is that humans and lightning are the main causes of fires of the fires that have been burning around here and they don't want people out there causing fires or getting caught out if there is a natural fire.

However, the local "ski" resort was open so we drove up the canyon right by our house and just started heading up the mountain biking trail. It wound around a lot so then we started heading right up one of the runs until we saw the second mtb trail and started hiking on it. Kinda reminds me of Tahoe, one of my favorite places in the world. Smells similar too, with the vanilla-scented pines. This is great mountain biking that we're going to have to hit up real soon.



One of the reasons for the hike was to put Bri into labor. We figured a good hard hike at high altitude would do the trick, but...no dice. I start tomorrow, so I guess I'm just going to have to bail out of my first rotation when she calls me.


According to Bri, this will be the last official "Belly Pic." She's not obscenely large, but she's getting bigger. Mostly, she's just ready for it all to be over. About 15 minutes after this picture was taken we started hearing rain drops. I noticed that they were hitting hard and seemed like big drops. Then one of the drops made a white smudge on Bri's shirt and I realized it was something between freezing rain and hail. It didn't hurt and it wasn't that cold, but it started getting heavier and heavier, so we turned back. It took a good 20 minutes to get down the mountain and we were cutting straight down the runs. It got going pretty strong, so we were plenty wet by the time we finally made it down. Crazy to think that it was hot down at our house and cold and raining up here. The drive down the canyon is beautiful.

I'm sure we looked pretty interesting to people going into Albertson's half wet and with dirty shoes when everyone else was trying to escape the heat. Sirloin steaks were buy one pack get one free, so we decided to finish off our "to do" list with a BBQ. Ben suggested Lawry's seasoning salt and we added black pepper and a little garlic. A great meal to chomp on after a good hike. Then, I fell asleep while enjoying our wonderful construction-zone backyard. Not a bad way to spend my last day of freedom before 5 years of residency starts. Oh, yeah, the other thing I did today was take some paperwork down to the local IRS building because our identity got stolen. the perfect end to my vacation...