Zoo Adventure

So, I work at Willow Park Zoo, which is pretty awesome, but I totally got my butt kicked working there last weekend. One of the first animals I feed are the Pronghorn Antelope. Until recently they were really nice, but now the male has his horns, and he tried to gore me! It was seriously intense, I had to put a coffee can between me and his horns and walk backwards out of the enclosure. The next day I brought a cattle prod with me, but knew that I would actually use it, so I ended up fending him off with a shovel.
He looks pretty innocent in this photo, but I was seriously shaking by the time I got out of there. Later in the day I had to spray out one of our ponds and I fell in twice. It was absolutely lame! Plus, both times I slipped there were people watching. It was unfortunate because now I totally hate that pond, which has one of my favorite birds there, the Hooded Merganser.

Darling, right? Eventually I got around to helping feed the tropical birds we keep inside. One of the birds is this crazy Sulfur-crested Cockatoo named Madge. We've had a bit of a love/hate relationship since I started, I call her Garry because she reminds me of one of my friends. Anyways, one of my co-workers was helping feed the animals with Madge/Garry on her shoulder and the crazy birds reached out and bit me on the side of the face! I admit I was pretty startled by it, usually she just nips at me, but this was freaking intense! Later, after she was back in her enclosure, I went to feed her and she totally latched on to my thumb. It got super infected and hurt quite a bit. Now I terrified of that birds, which is silly because I'm bigger than her.
Here's a picture of Madge before she was all rabid and bitey.
However, I should note that not all the animals at the zoo are out to get me. One of my favorites in Nova, our albino porcupine. She's totally friendly and absolutely adorable.
I'm also a huge fan of Ruddy Ducks. They don't do much, but they have a blue bill, which is about the coolest thing I've ever seen, they make me happy just seeing them.
Anyways, I have to go in to work tomorrow, and I'm hoping that it won't storm and that I won't be bitten or gored by anything.

Adventure to Temple Flats

So my goal with this whole blogspot bit is to adventure more. There's a lot of stuff I should see before I leave the valley and begin adventuring world wide. I figure the best way to do it is to share the adventures I do go on, and then if I don't add any others people will think I'm lame, and I hate it when people think I'm lame. Not all my adventures can be epic, so many will be small adventures, but adventures nonetheless.


My latest journey was a Friday afternoon hike to Ephraim's Grave. In the beginning I was going to start hiking in the Preston Valley camp ground in Logan Canyon and try to get to a peak I've hiked to from the other side of the mountain. Unfortunately I couldn't find where the trail started, so I gave up on that idea. I drove farther into the canyon and spotted a little rest area type thing with some interpretive signage and restrooms (which were clean, but had no toilet paper). Turns out this was sort of the trail head to a bunch of interesting Forest Serivce land, but the dirt road that lead to all the trails was closed. I decided not to let a silly fence get in my way, and that I could hike 9 miles in 3 hours. I was wrong about the distance I could hike, but I still feel good about my trip, because I saw a lot. Among the awesome things I saw were:
--an elk herd (and they were scared of me!)
















--cool yellow flowers with upside down stamens






















--a Blue Grouse (which I've never seen before, it scared me a little, then I thought it was stalking me)











--A yellow warbler (another first for me)










--A red-naped sapsucker (a type of woodpecker)













--and an Indigo Bunting, which was really cool to see because they're uncommon in Utah











(you may be able to tell, but I didn't take the bird pictures, my camera isn't quite that fantastic)


I saw a whole bunch of other birds that were also cool, but far more common. I was pretty psyched to be able to see all of these birds from the road, and looking for them was probably what slowed my journey down, but it was well worth it. Plus, I got to spend all my time hiking out of sight and earshot of the highway, it was glorious.
Part of the reason I could see all the things I did from the dirt road was that it was closed for the season. I couldn't really figure out why until I got to higher elevations, where I ran into a pretty epic snow drift right on top of the road. I'd say it was at least 8 feet high. On the way up I lost the road and ended up like 100 yards away before I found it again, so on the way back down I decided I'd just have to climb the drift. It was awesome, I felt like I was mountaineering a little bit.













I felt pretty responsible because I decided ahead of time that I should turn back around 7:00 or 7:30, to make sure I didn't spend too much time hiking in the dark. I did end up hiking back in the dark for about an hour, but it was alright because the moon was super bright, and I was hiking down the middle of a dirt road with few tripping hazards. In the end I hiked about 15 miles in 5 hours, which I still find pretty impressive. Unfortunately, the next morning I was epically sore and thought I was having a heart attack. And I learned that I am still pretty terrible at applying sunblock; I put it on, but forgot little spots, like the middle of my left arm and the inside of my right shoulder. I'm going to try to make it to Ephraim's Grave again in a week or so, but I'll make sure I start earlier in the morning.