USU

Brian and I walked around campus the other day. There are lots of cool things around but here are some of the highlights..

Old Main. Brian still can't belive I have gone to USU for 3 years and one summer and I have NEVER had a class in Old Main!! I've had class on old main running up and down the stairs and hills, but never inside the building.

 

 The Amphitheater where Brian witnessed a guy propose to his girlfriend and she ran off the stage crying leaving him on bended knee in front of the whole audience.

 

 USU has the most random sculptures ever! Here is Abraham Lincoln's Head, and George Washington's isn't too far away. What they have to do with USU I have no idea. I don't have pictures of the others but we can't forget the sculptures of yellow pillars that look like a bunch of french fries, the Indian goddess sculpture, the mountain man, and many more random shapes and faces.

 

 Speaking of random....Here's just one of the exercise/jogging course stops that are spread out around campus.

 

 

 The A

 

 

 The Bull

 

 And the best for last...... The place where all the magic happens, 

The Spectrum

 

And for your viewing pleasure some of the things that go on in the spectrum.

I believe that we will win 

 Winning team/losing team and WILD BILL!!

Lucky

I love Cisco's Landing!! This is my fifth summer working there, and I can't get enough of it!

Even when something like this happens.....

We were lucky that they turned, or they probably would have hit the gas dock. We were also lucky that no one got hurt!

A little girl time

The little girls and my mom came over Monday to hang out with me. We had tons of fun, and the sun was even out so it made it that much better!  We went to first dam, ate lunch and fed the ducks our leftovers. The girls then decided they needed to work off their lunch and wanted to go for a hike/walk. So we walked along the river path.















Aren't these girls just the cutest?!?!














Being silly with Grandma (Hattie doesn't like to be silly)

The girls got bored a little bit into the walk, so we played a game my mom always played with me when I was little...Hide and go seek! My mom and Hattie were on a team and me and Taylee were on a team. Taylee spotted the other two almost every single time and I couldn't see anything so it was a good thing she was on my team.  There were also other people on the path so when Taylee and I would jump in the bushes the people would look at us like we were crazy, and then one time my mom and Hattie went past us. So Tay and I were trying to get up a little hill where we hid and these ladies saw us coming out of the bushes and were like "Oh my gosh are you girls ok? What happened? Can we help?" and we were like "Nope just playing hide and go seek" and the ladies gave us a look like we were crazies.














Cheese!














Trying not to fall into the "crocodile" infested water














We also saw some cute baby ducks. And there were no turtles to attack them!!!

After the walk we decided to go to the Willow Park Zoo. I hadn't been to the Zoo since I was little and it reminded me of rollerblading up and down the bus isle's and my friend almost getting her hand taken off by a Turkey!















I think I could take care of one of these!















Lots of these pretty birds floating around















These are the things my nightmares are made off! Just look at the size of that beak!















Beautiful Creatures!

Attack of the eyelash

Brian's weakness is Eyeballs. If you touch his eye, touch your own eye, talk about touching your eye he freaks out. In the new Alice in Wonderland movie, a mouse pokes out a monsters eye and Brian about had a heart attack. If you mention the words eye doctor he gets queasy and has to sit down because he becomes light headed. So this morning when an eyelash decided to fall into Brian's eye and hold on for dear life, I was a little worried for his safety. At first he said it was no big deal but after a while I knew this was a life or death situation! I coaxed him to look at me so I could find where the culprit was hiding out. Lucky for us it was just in the corner of his eye. Bad for us, Brian couldn't stop blinking and squirming and the eyelash kept roaming about his eyeball cavity. I told him it would be simple for me to just reach up and touch the corner of his eye where the eyelash was and pull it out of his eye. This was not smart because I mentioned "touching" and "eye" in the same sentence and he had to lay down to try and calm his nerves. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. While he was laying down I made a sneak attack and sat on his chest and pinned his arms under my knees. I had to brace his head with my left arm and use my left hand as a clamp to hold his head still, while I pried his eyelid open with my left fingertips. With my right hand I used a Q-tip and calmly dabbed the corner of his eye where the eyelash was clinging to his eyeball, and with great success removed the retched beast from his eye. Brian had to see the culprit for himself and scolded the eyelash for landing in his eyeball. He then decided, after 5 minutes of deep breathing, the smartest move would be to shave off his remaining eyelashes so this would never happen again. Luckily he was too exhausted from the whole ordeal to go through with his plan.

Death March

So Brian and I are back in Utah for the summer. But not before we went on another adventure,  Brian decided he was sick of driving across the desert between Barstow and Las Vegas, and he had a new way to go home.  I couldn't have been happier. He then told me how we were going to drive up to Yosemite National Park and stay a couple nights and hike to the top of Yosemite Falls, which is one of the tallest waterfalls in North America.

It was a sad moment as I locked the apartment, and knew I wouldn't be back for a while, but I had bear boxes and huge waterfalls to look forward too! We made our way through part of L.A. and I was secretly sad I couldn't see the Hollywood sign. We then drove by tons of grape fields, fruit trees, Happy California Cows, and even a Kraft Food Factory, where I begged and pleaded with Brian to let me stop but he said if we wanted to set up camp in the light we better keep driving. 

We finally made it to Yosemite and quickly set up camp where I had my first encounter with the bear boxes!

 

If you look close you can see our bags in there. Well since we were moving home, I had all my shampoo's and lotions and hair stuff with me and you can't leave any of that in your car or a bear might smell it and rip open your car. So Brian made me pack a "smelly" bag with all the smelly things in it. 

 

Here's Brian relaxing in the tent.

  Here's my best impersonation of a tree hugger.

That night we had tinfoil dinners, and when we checked to see if they were done the dog next door could smell them and came over and begged for some food. We just shooed him away and enjoyed the rest of our dinner by the fire in peace. When the fire got low we decided we better clean things up and go to bed. I was over by the bear box putting things away when I looked up and saw Brian with a smile on his face, he pointed behind me and said "Bear." I just rolled my eyes at him and he was like "No BEAR" and kept pointing behind me. I finally gave in and slowly turned my head to look behind me and when I almost had my eyes on the beast, it barked at me. I let out a shriek and jumped, and then realized it was just the dog from next door, Brian about fell over laughing. Luckily there were no bear sightings the rest of the night.

The next morning we got up bright and early and packed all of our stuff in the car and headed out to Yosemite Valley.

You can see El Capitan just above my tuque. Half dome way in the back there in the middle, and Bridal Veil Falls off to my right.

 Here's Yosemite falls. See the highest point that sticks up there. Well that is where Brian decided we needed to hike to. Just going to the falls wasn't a good enough hike for him.

 At first I thought this hike wouldn't be to bad, I had hiked Angels Landing in Zion's twice and Brian said this would kind of be like that. Ummm no, let me give you a little info on this hike. The elevation by the time you get to the top of this thing is 6,936 feet. That's a lot! Especially when I just came from about 20 feet. We gained 2,969 feet in elevation and the round trip mileage is 9.4 miles. So that's about 4.7 miles all up hill, and 4.7 miles all downhill. People call it the mother of all stair-master workouts because if you were to climb the empire state building to the top just using the stairs, you would have to climb it twice and a little bit more to even come close to what this hike has in store for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not gonna lie it was tough! I found little shaded areas where I told Brian to look for me on his way back down because I was going to crawl in there and die. He had to poke, prod, drag and even bribe me up this thing. He probably could have ran up it if he really had wanted to. But it was an amazing hike with even more amazing sights.

This is maybe half way to the top. I was a little thirsty.

 

 

This is what the last mile and something looked like. Going up wasn't so bad, I was all numb all over and couldn't feel my legs anymore, but on the way down it was like a giant slip and slide and I think I slid down half of the snow in a sliding crouch position

I made it to the top!!!(right after this picture was taken I believe I collapsed in heap on the ground!)

Brian posing proudly in front of Half-Dome





















Peter even made the trip!

This is our celebratory licorice we promised ourselves when we reached the top.

Looking straight down...If you look close enough you can see our car.

If you look at the topish right hand side you can see some of the ziggy zag's we hiked up.

We had to get one of all three of us



















 Upper and Lower Yosemite falls





















Overall it was a great hike, even though I came away hobbling. And it didn't help that at our next campsite we had to park our car at the top of a hill and walk up and down it to get our stuff. By the end of the night I was a little delirious and I kind of took a liking to the huge pine cones

The rest of the trip was was pretty uneventful. We did stop at Lake Tahoe, and I named an Island after myself!