Desolation Lake & Crest

Joseph was planning on coming out to Utah this weekend, and he and Corey had been texting each other about doing a ride on Crest while he was out here. Joseph's plans changed and he wasn't able to come, but Corey and I did a ride in his honor this morning. 

Pic at the top on Wasatch Crest - we had a mother of a climb today, but it was a great ride.

We didn't exactly know what was coming with this, cause this was a new ride, but Corey was up early this morning and getting ready to go explore and then I decided to tag along. I had to go, cause I've been watching the weather and we're getting down to the last weekends of riding. Plus it was totally ok to abandon our responsibilities because Hyrum and Mel were both home today. Hooray, so off we went for a long ride. We had both been looking at Kyle's strava at a loop he did and today we tried to follow that. We got it pretty good. Kyle calls it "Deso Lolli" cause it looks like a lollipop. We did most of it the same, but ours looked like a devil head lollipop with two horns, cause we took one different segment than Kyle. Our total ride today was 3 hours 7 minutes, Left home around 8 am, drove up Millcreek canyon, parked at Alexander Basin Trailhead, started on the trail at 8:30. We rode up to Dog Lake > Desolation Lake > Red pine Rim > Wasatch Crest North > Great Western Trail > Big Water back to the car. 16.11 miles, 2906 feet. The climb up to Desolation lake is a black and it was bru-tal. I could barely do it walking my bike, let alone bike it! I think Corey biked most of it. Actually I don't know, I didn't look back. I was going so slow though that maybe he couldn't. My thighs were burning so bad. This was right after we got to the lake.

"You want to go around it?" I asked. "No." Ok, so I guess that means we keep going? I looked ahead at the trail. Ugh. More uphill. That's when I decided I did want to go around. Corey followed me to the beach and took a pic of me on the other side from him, doing my little lap. Nice to bike something flat! I'm that little vertical line in the sunlight.

The beach was all black and reminded me of Pucón. I picked up a few black rocks and then we were off. I had to walk again up to the spine of Crest. A doable climb, and then we were at the top - which is where some other bikers took our pic for us. Then they headed down to the meadows, and I led out and told Corey we were going to take Red Pine Rim, cause it's ok cause it meets back up with Crest. This was where we deviated from Kyle. We hadn't done the Red pine segment before and it was really cool! you come around a little bend and then you're on top of the mountain looking over a cliff and have a view of Snyderville and the whole Park City area!

We were done at 12:15, back home around 1. When we got home, Mel and Hyrum had been doing a wonderful job playing house, and the kids had done chores, the house was clean, kids were fed and dressed in their Halloween costumes and ready to go to a community Halloween event. Just waiting for the time to pass... watching reels with Hyrum.

"Headwound patient" Katharine joining in...

An hour later, after I've showered, I come back down... they are all still on Hyrum's phone. Slackers. But in their defense, they are in a different location. Hyrum let me know that they were doing something different on the phone too. "We're not watching reels... I'm sharing my latest text conversations with scammers..." He has like 7 new ones. 

Finally it was 2pm - yay the party's on! Mel and Hyrum continued their parental role playing and they took the kids over to the park. Corey and I joined them in a few, after catching up with Abi on how her monster mash dance date was going. The community had pumpkin carving contest, donuts and hot chocolate. The kids mostly just played on the playground. Oh, there was also a guy there doing animal balloons. The line for that was looong, much like the line for our face painting station at the 4th of July carnival. Peter got a green balloon, and left Hyrum in charge of it. He named it Tiny, and it was his new balloon dinosaur. Hyrum was fidgeting with it and messed it up. You're gonna get in trouble for that...

Peter did scold him, then went off to play.

H tried to fix Peter's balloon, and then it popped. Peter came back, sat and quietly mourned on the ground. 

Peter was sad. Corey commented "It's a metaphor for childhood..."  Mel and Hyrum's enjoyed that. I tried to comfort him and then Daniel left his balloon with Hyrum! Be warned Daniel! Hyrum is not a good babysitter.

Hyrum is Rex Kwondo, can you tell? He can even do the voice and had a few lines memorized. After we adults had had enough, we headed to the car to go back home. I like Katharine's princess head bandage. 

And after that full day, we've just been chillin' at home and checking on the BYU Game! BYU has been really fun to watch play. We are loyal BYU fans, not very faithful BYU football fans. But we started watching them after the awesome game against Kansas State where Parker Kingston had that 93 yard punt return for a touchdown. We're glad they won again, today, yay! The next game for BYU is against the U of U on Nov 9th! It's been fun to talk football with the boys.