catching up: thanksgiving

 It's December 2, 2023, and THANK GOODNESS shoulder season is over and we can finally get some content around here!  H is up at Alta for his first ski day this season - but more on that later.  First we have to go all the way back to last month and our nice Thanksgiving in Moab.

Commemorating the day with a selfie

H took the day before off, and I just packed up a little work to do at home, so we were on the road heading back down to the desert by 6 a.m. morning.  Traffic was fine, the roads were fine and because of our early start, Milton and I were hiking the Slickrock Trail practice loop at Sand Flats Recreation Area by 11 a.m.  Exercise thus accomplished, we set up some lamps (non-overhead lighting - woohoo!) and caught up with some friends at Woody's over a beer.

Our attempt at a group shot

Thanksgiving morning was chilly (low 30s) but sunny-ish.  We had reached out to our neighbors who were sticking around for the holiday weekend and by 10 a.m. we five people and two dogs were at the Amasa Back trailhead.  Along with lots of other vehicles.  Natalie and Lauren had never hiked over here before so we were happy to introduce them to one of our favorite loops: up the Hymasa MTB trail, to the river overlook, and then down the jeep trail.

And then a MTBer helped us out

It was a great day to hike - dry and nice, cool temperatures - and, despite the busy parking lot, we didn't see all that many people.  Enough MTBers to take a group photo for us, however.  Milton and Moscow (Amelia's Underdog rescue) had a great day, chasing each other, snuffling under trees, launching themselves off rocks for dog parkour.

What a crew

Amelia supports the "beers back at the trucks" situation as we do, and we all toasted a nice hike while we watched a number of BASE jumpers get organized and head towards the cliffs.  We didn't wait long enough to see them jump, however, because there was cooking to do!

Heading down

We had invited the girls over for our non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  Natalie and Lauren had plans with friends but Amelia and Moscow joined us for an excellent, low-key, no stress meal.  She made a delicious kale soup, spiced with chile peppers she had grown herself, which was a great lead-in to our lentil shepherd's pie, extra mashed potatoes (because you always need more mashed potatoes) and roasted acorn squash.  It was a really good day.

Hike stats: 6.22 miles; 2 hours 10 minutes/2.9 m.p.h. moving average; 2:25/2.6 overall