July: Month of Action! 1st Weekend

For some reason, July has been incredibly busy. I seriously think it's been weeks since I got a full night's rest. I had made all these goals about finally being good at this blogging thing and keeping it up, but July kinda swept away in a frenzy of adventure! So I will try to quickly recap.

The first weekend of July, I took Kristan up to Rexburg to introduce her to the concept of BYU-Idaho. We got there on Friday night, too late to go to the play we planned on seeing because there was an insane traffic jam between Idaho Falls and Rigby (it took us an hour to go 3 miles). So instead we rounded up some of my friends, former roommate Laura Denton, former FHE brother Keith Rose, and favorite literature friend Remington Jarvie and went up to the sand dunes. We rustled up some random wood and bark and Laura, the wilderness survivor, made a fire. Laura and I analyzed everyone else's personalities, and it was quite delightful.

Saturday morning, we went with former FHE brother Travis Moffat and Remington to hike R mountain, a large hill with an R painted on the side. It was lovely fun, and Remington had a jolly old time throwing rocks down the side of the mountain.

After that I met up with former Jacob Lakers, Laurel and Alison Greathouse and Brianna Malone, along with Travis, and we went to Rexburg's new waterpark, Rexburg Rapids. Don't ask me why Rexburg has a water park. It's a good idea for 3 months of the year... (I didn't get pictures :( ).

Then we went to dinner with Travis and his roommate Cory, as well as some other friends, Daina Nielson and Maryna Polonska. After that we met back up with Remington, and we decided to do the most reckless and dangerous thing I've ever done in Rexburg! Let's just say I'm glad I'm not a student anymore, otherwise getting caught would've been a lot more terrifying. :)

On Sunday, we went to church with Laura and then to dinner at Remington's; he made us egg rolls. :) That night I met up with more former roommates/friends, Bethany Hirsh, "Dello" DelloStritto, Mike Wilson, and Michael McCormick and we played games.

The next morning was the 4th of July, and we went to the Rexburg parade with Laura and Remington, and Brianna met up with us. My favorite part of it was the little Phillipina woman who joined us, Early. She was so awesome. Also, I got a picture with Darth Vader. :)

After that, Kristan and I headed back to Utah to have fireworks in Morgan with our family and Aunt Sandi. Which is always lovely. I really like the fireworks in Morgan, because from Sandi's house you can see a lot of different people setting off their personal fireworks in every direction. So you get a pretty sweet show. I'm not the hugest firework fan, but this year was pretty spectacular.

So it's become clear to me that it's impossible to make this short. So there's my first weekend of July. I will break up the rest of July by weekends and continue this blog post in a moment. :)

Jacob Lake Adventures: Revisited

So I started this post right after I returned from this trip, but for some reason at that time I was unable to upload the pictures. It only took me a few months to fix that problem...but here it is. My President's Day Weekend:

I visited a dear friend, Joseph Weatherford, at Jacob Lake this weekend with my other dear friend, Heidi Collins. We left on Saturday and returned Monday (thank goodness for national holidays). My family kept asking me why I went back to Jacob Lake since they thought I had been miserable there. Well, I wasn't completely miserable: there is no way to be miserable when there are opportunities to be epic in nearly every moment of the day. Jacob Lake is where I started running, where I took an hours long off-trail-adventures, where I hiked across the Grand Canyon, where I made a perfectly symmetrical sweet roll and perfect bread. I did a lot of awesome things there.

Friends were one of the most epic parts of Jacob Lake. Heidi worked with me in the bakery, and Joe and Chad worked in the service station. The four of "Us" hung out all the time, stargazing at the Grand Canyon, singing "Lake Ponchartrain," and walking up the road a mile to climb the fire tower at night. Also, we played the question game a lot, so of course, they quickly became some of the best friends I've had.

So that's the background of this weekend. Well, when we got to Jacob Lake, there were two feet of snow on the ground, and another foot fell on Saturday night.

 

We decided it would be a brilliantly epic idea to hike the mile uphill to the fire tower in the three feet of snow, then climb the 80-foot tower in a blizzard:

 

After that, we played cards and watched August Rush. That night, we played the question game in our room until we all fell asleep (don't worry, Joe was in a different bed!)

On Monday morning we hung out in Fredonia, Arizona, which is the most sad place I have ever been. Haha. Don't go live there. Then Heidi and I drove back up and on the way we found this sign in Orderville, which we thought was fantastic. :)

Although it seems simple, it was a fantastic weekend. I finally was able to buy my Mexican hoodie from the "Guns Ammo Lotto Beer" gas station in Fredonia. I mean, it was wonderful. And now I can tell my kids and my grandkids that I once had to walk a mile uphill in three feet of snow. Besides, the best kind of friends are the ones where it doesn't matter if you do epic things or not, because every moment together is epic. :)

Mowing the Lawn: A Romantic Take

I haven't mowed my parents' lawn in 6 years, since I graduated high school, but with my parents and my two youngest sisters out of town for 2 weeks (since one of them usually takes care of it), I had to mow it today. And I was quite surprised at how much I learned while pushing that ancient mechanical vegetarian around.

I hated mowing the lawn as a teenager. If my parent's hadn't paid me for it, I probably would've suffered a lot of nagging for my neglect of the chore. But today I learned lesson number one: Somewhere between now and then, I learned to love physical labor. I'm going to say this was at Jacob Lake, although it had probably been building up since Germany. Working in the bakery at Jacob Lake was the most physically intense job I've ever had, and nearly every other activity at Jacob Lake, that I engaged in, was physical as well. I went running 5-6 times a week, and on my days off I went hiking or swimming for hours almost every single week. Not to mention hiking across the Grand Canyon in one day, which I still need to blog about. After that experience, I can say that I am not afraid to use my body for work because I'm much more aware of what it can do. Karate is helping with that, too. I'm very glad that I changed from a soft, spoiled teenager into a hard-working, borderline-athletic adult. :)

Next lesson was more gradual over the course of 90 minutes of mowing.  See, the lawn hadn't been mowed in a while, and had grown quite tall because of all the rain we've been having here. To give you an idea, the dogs looked like lionesses on the hunt in the grasslands of Africa as they ran around the yard. I remembered as a kid begging my dad to let the grass grow that long at some point, because I just knew it would inspire something fantastic in me, not to mention be less itchy. He never let it grow that long, but I was right, it would inspire something fantastic in me, because it did today.

I had forgotten something very important: I super love nature. Being in the backyard for that long brought back a lot of memories (as a child, if I wasn't down the street at the Cards' house, I was in the backyard crawling around on my hands and knees), especially concerning the cherry tree we have growing on the hill, where I spent many hours reading books among the branches. Back then, it was much easier to just go outside and be happy, and I want to get back to that fundamental value. Whenever life is stressful, take a stroll through the park. Walk the dogs. Fall asleep in some grass. Admire some flowers. Even a few minutes of this is rejuvenating.

I think this is why Germany and Jacob Lake and Rexburg are such happy places in my life. All three of them are surrounded in wilderness. In Rexburg, I lived across the street from a park for most of my time there, plus there were the sand dunes, wide open fields, short hikes, caves, and abundant places for bonfires within half an hour of everywhere. In Germany, the cities are like little pockets of civilization contained in the vast recklessly majestic forest. And Jacob Lake was just a group of maybe ten buildings with 40 miles of forest in every direction before you hit any more buildings. I think I'm a country girl with better taste in music.

So, how is this Romantic? It's "big R Romantic," meaning from the philosophical era of Romanticism. Commune with nature, free yourself from inhibitions, dare to dream...

I've been having a lot of epiphanies around these kind of subjects lately. I guess I'm in a growing period. But I can't talk about them all now, so look for upcoming entries on Glee and Avatar: The Last Airbender. :)

Jacob Lake

So we finally got fast enough and reliable enough Internet here at Jacob Lake so I can update my blog and let you all know what it's like! WHOO!!

In case you were unaware, I am working at Jacob Lake, 45 min north of the Grand Canyon in Arizona (also about 45 min south of the Utah/Arizona border). It is a small lodge on the side of the road on highway 89A. We have about 5 cabins, a motel, and a hotel (not sure what the point of differentiating the two is; I guess the motel is cheaper/smaller rooms?).

I work in the bakery, where I make either hundreds of cookies or lots of bread and rolls, depending on what day it is. My bakery partner, Heidi, and I switch off doing bread and cookies every other day. Let me just list for you the kind of cookies we make:
Chocolate Chip
Chocolate Chip with Walnuts
Peanutbutter
Peanutbutter with chocolate chips
Gingersnap
Chocolate Parfait (like chocolate chip but with MUCH richer dough and chocolate pieces the size of quarters)
Lemon Sugar
Lemon Zucchini (with pecans)
German Chocolate (with the nasty frosting)
Cookie in a Cloud (chocolate cookie with a marshmellow melted on top and chocolate frosting)
Oatmeal Raisin
Six Grain (I don't know what the grains are but it's one of my favorites)
and starting yesterday: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip (the best recipe I have ever tasted)
My favorites are the Six Grain and Gingersnap (thankfully the healthy ones). Chocolate Parfait sounds divine but is actually my least favorite. It's too rich, you can practically taste the 16 1/2 pounds of margarine, 42 eggs, and 30 3/4 pounds of flour. :P

I start work at either 6:30 or 7:30 every day (depending on whether I'm doing bread or cookies), have a 2 hour break, and get off between 4:30 and 5:30 (depending on when I get everything done). After work, I either watch movies, go to Kanab (the happening place for us, but still too small for a Walmart), or go watch the sunset (usually at the Grand Canyon; I think I've been 4-5 times now).

Once a week we get a day off, and everyone who has the day off together goes on some adventure, usually in Southern Utah. So far I've been to Kanarraville (outside Cedar City), Sand Hollow (around St. George), and Lake Powell. At Kanarraville, you hike through a river until you get to some natural waterslides, Sand Hollow is a reservoir with really beautiful sandstone, and Lake Powell is generally well known. I've had some really awesome adventures that I might expound on sometime. For now, I'm giving an overview.

It has been amazing. I should also later give you some character profiles of the incredible people I have met here. I feel very blessed to have these people in my life. In about 5 min, we are going to start Thursday night at the movies, so I am going to wrap this up really quick with some pictures:

My old roommate Laura stopped by on her way to New Mexico and we went stargazing at the G.C.

An off-trail adventure at Kanarraville with Sean Wright, Brianna Malone, and Lauren Jones.

My Little Mermaid pose at Sand Hollow.

Adventures in Kanab: going out for ice cream, Hunter posed this question to a couple of teenage boys.

At Lake Powell with Courtney Lopez.

Watching the sunset (can't remember the name of the place, it's not the G.C. though) wiht Laurel Greathouse.

YAY! I'll try to give more details later.