Celebration Dos

Since Dallin, Kyle, Jon, Kenna, and Sidney couldn't hike Timp with us on Thursday we improvised and celebrated by hiking to Stewart Falls. Nice family photo, eh?

After the hike Jess and I went to our birthday tradition dinner place, The Olive Garden! Whenever we go to the OG we get an attractive waiter and then look like idiots because of how awkward we get. Well of course that happened to us again but our waiter was neat and I think I charmed him with my awkwardness because he bought me dessert, pumpkin cheesecake. I don't like cheesecake or pumpkin but this dessert was pretty tasty so I highly recommend it.

Celebration Uno

In honor of my birthday, Jessica and I hiked to the summit of Timpanogos. We woke up way too early and headed for Timpooneke trail head around 5:45 and expected to start our hike at about 6:30. We failed at our time estimation, big time. Timpooneke parking lot was closed due to construction of a new parking lot. Uh... Thanks internet for the heads up! 

At that point I getting worried that we weren't going to be able to hike Timp but we discovered that we could park in other parking lots and walk to Timpooneke. So that's just what we did. We parked at Pine Hollow and walked for about two miles to Timpooneke and started our hike at approximately 7:50 AM. FINALLY. 

It was a little discouraging that it took us so long to get started, BUT we when we did get started, it felt great! Just before we got to the Saddle back I heard a weird noise that I thought was coming from Jessica, until I realized that it was definitely coming from an animal and one from a far distance. We don't exactly know what it was but it was a high pitched howl-ish. So I am guessing it was a coyote? I was going to record the noise but right when I pulled my phone out, it stopped. Bummer. At 11:45 we made it to the Saddle back, took a break and ate some lunch. 

The hike down felt like it took forever which is strange because that is usually the fast part. Jessica has bad knees and I am a terrible friend and left her in my dust. Half way down it started raining, so I started running not that it made a difference with how wet I got. After ten minutes of running I decided that I should slow down and just enjoy the rain so that's what I did. The last three miles I bumped into a friendly man and found a new hiking buddy for the rest of my hike. Despite the rain and extra mileage it was a beautiful, fun hike to Timp. I cannot wait for next years hike since this is now a birthday tradish.