dry enough

The weather here in northern Utah continues to be a little weird, with lots of little storms rolling in and out quickly, keeping it cool and damp.  On the plus side, we've not turned our sprinklers on yet! On the negative side, it's difficult to get outside and play when you're concerned about getting stuck out in a thunderstorm.  H has been getting on his road bike as often as he can but got caught Tuesday evening when one of those fast-moving little storms came in; then Wednesday, it looked like rain so he went running instead of riding, and by the time he got home, the skies were completely clear.  Very hard to plan.

The Memorial Day weekend was similarly difficult to plan.  Saturday's weather forecast predicted the storms starting around midday, so we opted out of the mountains.  I took it upon myself to wash the windows (which, if I'm honest, hadn't been washed in two or three years - yikes) and rip out a section of grass-infested ground cover in the front lawn.  That took me a while and managed to give me a bigger upper-body workout than I've had in ages.  H went for an early road ride and got 35 miles in.  He saw about sixty other cyclists - folks trying to take advantage of the window of sunshine - and lots and lots of yard sales - folks trying to take advantage of the window of sunshine.

It doesn't look it, but technically I'm going uphill

On Sunday, the forecast pushed the storms back to later in the day and we geared up and headed to Round Valley for MTBing.  The temperature was very nice for riding: cool but not so cold that we didn't warm up.  It was a little breezy but not terribly so; we actually wished for a bit more wind in sections of the trail because there were some weird bugs - not biting but getting stuck in our ears and faces.  The trail traffic was much better than the last time we were out although, per usual, we started seeing more people around 10:30 a.m., which seems to be the magic hour for most people.  Even with the recent rains, the trails were in good condition, damp in a couple spots but no puddles.  Despite his long road ride the day before, H was riding great; I, on the other hand, was slow and had trouble focusing for some reason.  Still, it was a good day on the trails.

Guardsman Pass opened for the season this weekend so we headed that way to go home, stopping at our picnic spot for snacks.  It hadn't progressed much towards summer up at that elevation, however, with no leaves on the aspens and winterkill still all over the ground.  The wind was brisk and the clouds started moving in so we had our snacks in the truck, watching the hawks circling overhead, looking for small and delicious snacks of their own.  Since it had been six months since we'd been up at the head of Big Cottonwood Canyon, we drove through Brighton before heading down for home.  There's still a lot of snow up at the top of the canyons, something to keep in mind for planning hikes in the next couple of weeks.  Summer is coming, though, and that snow won't last too much longer.