So much snow...

We seem to keep getting storm after storm and the snow is just piling up. I love it!

This week was pretty rough for Dani. We know there's no magic date for the "morning" sickness to go away, but it was discouraging for her to feel better for a little bit and then go back to feeling lousy.

On Tuesday my buddy Todd and I drove up Little Cottonwood Canyon to snowshoe to White Pine Lake. Todd used skins on his splitboard and he let me borrow a pair of snowshoes. We were one of the only ones to hike that trail since the last snowfall, so we were breaking trail most of the way. I realized pretty quick that I am out of shape! It felt like wearing flip-flops in knee-deep water while sinking down into mud, except with heavy winter gear and all snow. It was all I could do to keep up with the guy who's been fighting fire as a hotshot all season! Regardless, we enjoyed catching up and breathing the smog-free mountain air. It was incredible hiking through the blanketed trees and deep snowdrifts with white mountain peaks surrounding us.

Our trail through the trees

This week I had my first ride-a-long with Morgan County EMS. I will be volunteering with them just like I did down in Moab. Morgan is a small community of less than 10,000 residents about 25 minutes away from my house. Our call volume is pretty small, so sometimes it can be boring around here. I usually just bring my homework and hang out at the station until we get a 911 call. It will be a good way to force me to take a full study day for the week while still doing what I love on the ambulance.

The call we had that day was for a woman with a kidney stone in extreme back pain. She was at the Morgan Health Center and we transported her to McKay Dee Hospital in Ogden. We don't have a hospital locally, so we take all of our patients to Ogden. A fairly uneventful day, but I love being back on the ambulance.

What's a quinzee?

Igloo: built of blocks of hard snow
Snow cave: shelter dug in deep drifted snow

A quinzee is a shelter made by piling snow into a mound and then burrowing into it. I've always wanted to build one and sleep in it, but living in Moab I never saw enough snow to make one. That all changed when we moved to northern Utah! I spent the day after our white Christmas making a huge snow pile, and the next day carving it out. It was long and wide enough for two people to lay flat! I spread out a tarp and threw out our sleeping pads and bags and Dani and I slept that night perfectly cozy.

Dani had a streak of good days, and we were able to drive down to Provo to hang out with some of her friends, namely Candace who was visiting with her family from Alabama for Christmas. Nearly all of Dani's college roommates have babies, so it was nice to hear their stories and get some good advice for new parents.

Candace with Ollie, Dani, Michelle with Everley, and Laura with Josh

Unfortunately later this week Dani started feeling sick again, but she encouraged me to go hiking to alleviate my case of cabin fever. I did the Ogden Canyon Overlook trail, which starts at Snowbasin ski resort and goes up about 2.5 miles to the top of Ogden Canyon. There was quite a bit of snow but there had been enough people who skied the trail to pack it down enough for me in my hiking boots. After I escaped the overflowing parking lot of snow sports enthusiasts, I didn't see anybody else on the trail until I was almost to the trailhead again. It was a perfect day of solitude.

Since Hawaii...

... our lives have been pretty crazy! Dani got a job (the day we flew back to Utah!) as a second grade teacher at Ellison Park Elementary in Layton, and after a few more days in Moab we moved up here. Dani was immediately swamped at work (I can't tell you how many hours I was in her classroom to help her get everything set up, I had no idea how much work it was!) and I started the first semester of my nursing program at Weber State University.

This cute woman's first day of school!

While I studied full-time Dani worked double-time (literally, 13-14 hour days, 6 days a week). Fairly soon after starting her job, Dani realized she wasn't getting paid enough to loose her sanity and knew there wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel, so she resigned so she could function like a normal person. All the other teachers told her that "It's just your first year - by your third year it will be a lot easier," but we're hoping to start a family sooner than that and we felt like if this wasn't going to be a life-long career for her then it wasn't really worth it.

Anyways, I like having my wife back.

School has been going great for me! I'm just wrapping up the semester and I loved just about every minute of it. Clinicals have been in a nearby nursing home, which although it isn't very exciting, it's been a great opportunity to practice my new skills. I'm also working for my dad on Fridays down in Springville, which I love. I've always told people that I want to become a nurse anesthetist, but since working with my dad I've discovered how much fun it is to help people in ways that not all doctors can. I'm considering becoming a nurse practitioner, and Weber just started their own NP program that I think I'd love. Anyhow, I still have plenty of time to determine what I want to do after I graduate.

Not long after moving into our new ward, they called me to my dream calling - the new Scoutmaster! I was pretty stoked to accept this new responsibility. Thanks to mom for buying me a large uniform back when I was 11 (it looked ridiculous at the time but is saving me money now), I just had to take off a few patches and Grandma sewed on my new ones! I am excited to have some awesome adventures with the boys.

I think that about sums it up! Here are a few pictures of what's been going on with us.

Our first hike in Layton was Adam's Canyon.

Adam's Canyon in the fall.

Slow shutter of the waterfall at the end of Farmington Creek Trail.

One of Dani's best high school friends Claudia was in the states from Spain (where she lives)
for a couple weeks and she flew to Utah for 24 hours just to visit us!

Summiting Ben Lomond above Ogden.

At the peak. Mantua and Cache Valley are behind us.

"The stare down"
We nearly ran into this cow moose and her calf on the trail. We didn't stick around long after this picture.

MTB and Mt. Tuk

After work one hot evening, Dani and I rode one of the trails out by Klondike Bluffs. This blazing weather must have scared the tourists away, because we only saw one other couple out there. We had a nice ride on the Jurassic trail singletrack.

My sexy, hard-core, mountain biking woman

For dad's last weekend to train before his hike, we went to the mountains to hike Mt. Tukuhnikivatz (or Tuk for short, I sure can't pronounce the full name). The trail was only about 5 miles round trip, but we were at 10,000 ft elevation and we hiked to the summit at 12,482 ft. The last quarter mile to the peak was a lung-busting 45 degree angle climb, but at the top we were rewarded with views in every direction forever -- we could see the entire Moab valley, Arches and Canyonlands, the San Rafael Swell, the Henry Mountains, and even the peaks near Telluride, CO. We enjoyed lunch up there before the controlled burn on the other side of the range clouded the sky over with smoke.

Looking back on the approach to the ridge

The beginning of the ridge to the peak

Just snow and scree

Dad lung-bustin' up the 45° ascent in the snow with Mt. Peale in the background

At the summit! 12,482 ft, Moab valley behind us

I'm afraid that these "training hikes" have been more fun than they have been training. Dad will have to hike over twice as much as he's hiked in one day when he treks the Grand Canyon. It's hard to find somewhere with the long distance without getting bored of walking.

Murphy Trail

Our week was busy but uneventful; Dani is on the river almost every day during June, and when I'm not at the office I pick up as many EMT shifts as I can. Several times a week we are called on transfers. Moab Regional Hospital sends a lot of their patients to surrounding hospitals for different reasons. I say surrounding, but the other hospitals aren't very close - the nearest transfer is St. Mary's in Grand Junction at an hour and 45 minutes, and the farthest transfer we do is to SLC, 4 hours one way.

I don't hate transfers, it's just exasperating when I'm riding in the back of the ambulance with my stable (read: not exciting) patient towards one of these hospitals, and we hear on our radio the backcountry call that just went out to the back-up crew. I have to remind myself that quality patient care is most important, and try not to grumble about the fun the other EMTs are having.

With only two weeks left before Dad's rim-to-rim trek, we needed to put some miles in. A friend of ours suggested doing a trail in Island in the Sky (Canyonlands NP) that would give us a challenging distance and elevation. On Saturday morning we began the Murphy Trail, descending to the white rim. We followed the cliffside, exploring some of the neat rock formations. After we completed our loop, our total mileage was 12.4mi and 1,400 ft elevation gain/loss.

MORE hiking?

After a week of recovery from our big hike, I hit the trail again with my dad, who is training for his rim-to-rim trek at the end of June. We hiked from Hidden Valley to the Moab Rim, and after scrambling around off trail it ended up being about 8.5 miles and almost 1000 ft elevation gain and loss. At the end of the Hidden Valley trail we visited some neat petroglyphs that I've never noticed before. There were a lot of desert critters, including a couple of bull snakes. It was a lot of fun to spend the time with my dad, and I'm looking forward to helping him train more.

My dad and I have very similar hiking styles. If we see something that looks cool, we'll go explore it... even if it takes us off the trail for hours, scrambling up rocks on the edge of a cliff, while jumping through pokey bushes. Unfortunately, we've both burned bridges with the rest of our family (who--for some reason--don't appreciate these kinds of adventures), but we sure enjoy exploring together!

That evening after Dani got off the river we went over to the Moab Arts Fest and bumped into one of our old buddies, Jason, who was selling some of his ceramics. We invited him and his new wife to float the river with us on Memorial Day before they left town. One of my other friends, Sheena, was in town for the weekend with her husband, so we invited them too.

On Monday, Dani and I grabbed a few inflatable kayaks from the Hazlett's and met up with our friends and their spouses to raft down the daily section of the Colorado. There was no whitewater carnage, but we had a good time!

Our buddies Kat, Jason, Tyler, and Sheena

Rim-to-Rim

You know that moment when all of a sudden, out of the blue, you and your best friend have the same days off work so you feel the NEED to go on a fun adventure? Well Chris and I had that moment. And decided to take a spontaneous trip to the Grand Canyon...and hike rim-to-rim.

We didn't have much time to prepare for this endeavor so we simply ran to the grocery store to get some goods, packed our bags and made a plan that went like this: drive to the Grand Canyon and then hike. After a quick post-work nap we left at 1am on Wednesday for our grand adventure.  During the drive I learned a few things about my husband, #1 he knows every word to every Celine Dion song ever written and has the vocal chords to attempt to hit them and #2 he has a theory that if you sing as loud and as ugly as you can then you will sound exactly like Guns N' Roses and can sing along to any of their songs (I tested this theory and he's on to something big). When we came to the crossroads of the sign that said "North Rim <- South Rim ->" we took a wild guess and decided to start at the South Rim, just because.

Thanks to a time zone change - which we totally forgot was going to happen or we would have slept in longer than 1am - we arrived at the Grand Canyon just as the first light was coming up. It's a little surprising, because you're driving in a fairly flat desert--and then suddenly--the world drops off in front of you. It was amazing to watch the sunrise, especially since all the other tourists were sleeping--giving us the opportunity to feel some solitude. We then headed to the backcountry office right as they opened to see if we could get a permit to camp inside of the Grand Canyon at some point that weekend. As you can well imagine, those permits are hard to come by and we had no such luck. This lead to our decision to spend the day seeing sights around the visitors center, and then begin hiking the next morning across the canyon in a day.

Snapped this photo just as a thunderstorm rolled in.

We had fun playing tourist, but definitely felt like we were missing something as we stood at the edge of the canyon looking down. It felt too "Disneyland-ish" and void of the awe factor we had been expecting. Knowing that we needed more out of our Grand Canyon experience we went to bed early to catch a good night's rest before our big hike the next day.

Our alarms woke us up at 3:30am so we could take down camp, catch the first shuttle to the trailhead, and start hiking down Bright Angel Trail by 4:45. The descent into the canyon was spectacular! The farther we hiked, the larger the canyon became, and we finally felt like we were really seeing it. We hiked. And hiked. When we felt like we had to be at the bottom of the canyon there was another canyon wall to descend. When we finally got down to the Colorado River we felt a pang of longing, as we know we will never really feel like we've experienced the Grand Canyon until we've rafted it (mark my words--one day it will happen). The bottom of the canyon was stunning with the black granite, refreshing creeks, and a surprising amount of shade.

It wasn't long after we got to the bottom that we realized we should have planned our trip better, or rather at all--as going south to north meant that about a quarter of our hike was downhill and the rest was going to be uphill. But an uphill battle wouldn't stop us as we continued on. We hiked. And hiked. Annnnnnd hiked. We saw a lot of pretty things along the way, but mostly we just dripped in sweat and thought about how smart everybody else was who we met who had trained for this hike and had daypacks instead of full overnight packs. Since we hadn't planned our hike in advance, we carried all our camping gear to stay at the North Rim. Let me tell you - the size of your pack makes a big difference.

As we approached the north rim we were blown away with how different the terrain was from the south rim. We were no longer in Visitor Center chaos of the desert but had entered a much less populated and beautiful Aspen forest. We were lucky to be able to walk up and get a tent spot in the "hiker/biker communal site." After a quick dinner we crashed and slept like rocks throughout the night.

"We made it!" thumbs up.

Chris threw together the video below, pretty much summing up our big hike.

                                   

When our legs wouldn't move in the morning, Chris opted to take the shuttle back to the south rim to pick up our truck. During his long drive I made fast friends with some neat hikers who were in the communal site. When Chris got back we drove to Page, Arizona, where we had a big all-you-can-eat Chinese dinner and found a campsite near Horseshoe Bend. We were too tired to set up our tent so we just laid our sleeping bags in the truck bed and crashed like we had never slept before.

When Saturday rolled around we once again woke up at a ghastly hour (though slightly later than the previous two days) and drove to Horseshoe Bend to see the sunrise. Our tired legs hobbled the longest quarter mile we have ever experienced to the overlook. Once again our planning, or lack thereof, shone through as the sun rose in the opposite direction of the Horseshoe Bend overlook! Regardless,  it was a scenic and peaceful morning. We met a sweet couple from Japan who Chris offered to take some pictures for. The husband then gave me a small pillow to sit on so I wouldn't have to sit on the cold hard rock, and then insisted I keep the pillow (which had tags in Japanese!) when we left. It was such a kind gesture, and was a wonderful reminder of how little acts of kindness can brighten somebody's day.

When we were done taking pictures we limped back to the truck, began singing a mix of Celine Dion and Guns N' Roses, and headed back home (where we agreed that upon return we would do nothing other than eat and lay in bed for the foreseeable future).

Remember to pray and remember to play,

But really just remember to plan your vacations,

Mr. & Mrs. Our-Legs-Ache-Andrew

Capitol Reef and a Highway Rollover

This week was a blast. Dad, mom, and Jacob left on a Mexican cruise, so Dani and I had the youngest two all week. Dani spoiled them rotten while I was working and training with the EMS department, taking them on all sorts of hikes and adventures. She even baked them a giant cookie and let them decorate it (the frosting reads: No Parents!)! I didn't have work Thursday or Friday, so we took off to Capitol Reef to spend a long weekend in the Park. None of us had ever been there before, so we explored around the desert, discovering all sorts of arches, potholes, and caves. We weren't exactly roughing it in the backyard-like "campground," but Olivia certainly appreciated the flushing toilets.

The rain was off and on all weekend. Desert rain feels pretty incredible - the dampness in the air feels so refreshing, and the fresh-soaked ground smells so alive. The lichen on the red rock turns green, and the rivers turn a copper shade of chocolate milk. We stayed away from narrow canyons, as the scarcely-seen cliffside waterfalls had filled the usually dry river bottoms with flash flooding.

Matthew and Olivia playing in the "Kukoo-moodoo" holes

At the end of our longest 7 mile hike, we found a series of pools, or tanks, that cascade into one another when it rains.  In one of them there were a ton of toads!

When we got back to Moab on Saturday, I took Matthew out to test fire his newly-built potato canon. I can't believe I never constructed one of these when I was his age! When we got home I told Dani that I'll probably have to make one before we have our own sons.

                                    

Today was pretty exciting for me. I was on-call for Grand County EMS, and early this morning we were paged out to a vehicle rollover on the highway. After three previous shifts without any real calls, you better believe I was the first one to the response shed.

Even running code with our lights and sirens on, our travel time to the accident was over 30 minutes. He had swerved off the road, flipped his car at least three times, and landed in the opposite direction of traffic. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt, and the airbag didn't deploy. When we arrived, our patient was up and walking around, and after a full assessment, he refused to be transported, only asking for a bandaid to cover an existing cut on his finger. What an incredible miracle! Although I was looking forward to the excitement of actually being involved in patient care and transport, I was pretty glad that he survived without any serious injuries.

I finished my day with a transport from our hospital to Grand Junction, CO where our patient could have his appendix taken out, as our surgeon is moving and his replacement hasn't arrived yet. I'm really looking forward to volunteering more as an EMT this summer.