rest day

Sunday morning, the day after the hill climb, we'd planned to go MTBing as  it has been a while since we've done that.  But H went out for a quick road ride and came back with fatigued legs, and suggested that maybe we should go find a state park reservoir for a "beach day" instead of hiking or biking.  Now, I love hiking and MTBing but I am also very much in favor of sitting in the sun by the water, reading.

So we went to East Canyon State Park, out there in the middle of the rolling hills of Morgan County.  We got there before noon and were able to lay claim to a still-empty picnic pavilion with a nice view of the reservoir.  It was clear and sunny with a nice breeze and lots of people were out and about at the park: swimming, boating, fishing, jet-skiing.  Although there were lots of folks around, it was still really peaceful; the pavilions are not right on top of each other and there's plenty of lawn for frisbee, whiffleball, etc.

Not that we did any of that.  H did bring his fishing pole (it was a little too busy/breezy for fishing) but we just put out our chairs facing the reservoir and read, stopping only to eat lunch, grab a cold beer or watch the entertaining little Uinta ground squirrels (a/k/a "potguts") boldly scurrying around, looking for handouts.

The clouds slowly accumulated throughout the afternoon, as the weather report had warned they would, and by 3:30 p.m., the wind had picked up and the lightning that had been flashing above the distant hills was flashing above us.  First we had pea-sized hail, then it rained, then both rain and hail.  We watched it for a while, then gathered our things and made a dash for the truck.  Even though the weather was moving through pretty quickly, the temperature had plummeted to 59 and we decided we'd had enough for one day.  It was probably the right call, seeing how the clouds continued all the way back home, as did the rain, even though the temperatures came back up to around 80.  That's okay: the ground can use the rain, just as we used our rest day - sometimes you just need to sit.