rites of spring

Ah, a long weekend (in my last job back in Maine, all my weekends were long weekends - I had Fridays off - and that was one of the biggest shocks when we moved to Utah, having to work five days a week every week).  That means Moab!  We drove the Subaru down Thursday night (Subaru means hiking and road biking only as I don't have a trailer hitch for the bike rack for the MTBs) and, after a long enough town walk to count as exercise (about an hour), we stopped in at Woody's for a beer.  One of our favorite bartenders ("Daisy") was working, so that was nice to see her.  It was also karaoke night, which can be a mixed bag at best.  Much to our surprise and delight, the best performer of the night, at least as long as we were there, was Brett, a former Josie Wyatt's bartender back in town for a visit.  He brought the house down with his renditions of Britney Spears's "Baby One More Time" and Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!"  He knew 100% of the lyrics without looking.  It was awesome.

Funky little mushroom formation

On Friday, A weeded (so much weeding, always weeding) while H and Milton did a three mile Pipe Dream trail run.  It was partly cloudy and stayed nicely cool, a real treat for the end of May.  After that, H and A did a 21 mile road ride on the bike path: out to the end of the river road bike path twice, plus up to the Arches National Park entrance), pausing for a few moments to watch a BASE jumper successfully land a jump from the cliffs above.  Late afternoon found us wandering into Josie Wyatt's for a couple of beers, where we were able to catch up with a couple of local friends.

Creeks are looking healthy

Saturday stayed cool.  While H did a 5 mile trail run on Pipe Dream, A and Milton did 4+ miles in Millcreek (out along the rim trail and then back via right hand fork).  We had a 6:30 a.m. start which meant that we were the first ones in the parking lot and only saw two trail runners and a hiker when we were on the rim.  The creek was running well and was fairly cold: Milton enjoyed wading and splashing around but didn't seem inclined to swim.  And when it was knee-deep on me to wade across on the four creek crossings, my feet got numb.  We did meet another three hikers and a dog as we were just finishing up (and Milton got a trail cookie from one of them), and the cars were beginning to roll in as we left, but for the most part we had the place to ourselves.