Winter Adventuring

Well, I've been productive for the past two days, so now I must blog about the fun times I've had slacking.

First, I went on a field trip to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. I've been there many times, but I was able to take pictures this time. I'm pretty proud of myself. And in case you wondered, seeing Great Blue Herons is really cool.

A few weeks ago my buddy Lou and I went to Red Rock Pass. We expected big things, so it was a little disappointing. Red Rock Pass is where Lake Bonneville flowed out of thousands of years ago. It was an epic event, but the resulting land formation was not so epic. Check out a brief history of Lake Bonneville here, then you might understand what we expected to see. Most of the adventure was in the driving. We drove through some pretty piddly towns in southern Idaho, and learned from some pretty scary billboards just how scary meth is (don't go see the billboards, just remember that meth is bad- don't do drugs).

Here are some red rocks, you can imagine a river pouring through here, right?Here is where Lake Bonneville drained to, with the flow all the rivers in North America. Intense right?

There was a little walk up to the top of a knoll, where we could look down and see Gus. Oh, Gus, such a trooper. Gus was having a little problem. Well, the "check engine" light said there was a problem. I fixed it though.In the end, we made it home safely, knowing that drugs could ruin our lives.

Our next adventure was snowshoeing. First time through we went to Green Canyon. We spent quite a bit of time trudging up the road, but eventually we found a trail and headed up the mountain, then slid back down it. It was fairly awesome. We decided to repeat the adventure again a few weeks later, in a mystery canyon. We were aiming for Smithfield Canyon, I don't think we made it. The road we were on said we were in Constellation Canyon. Either way, it was awesome. Gus did some more awesome work. Then we did some real work, busting ass up the mountain.

I overdressed for the treck. It was so cold in the Valley, but up above the inversion it was nice and toasty.Sitting felt nice, but making a snow angel felt even better.Here Lou is, not making a snow angel.You can really see the inversion from here. Its not fog down there, its smog. When I get lung cancer I'm blaming it on the 3 years I spent in Logan.We made it to the boundary of the Mt. Naomi Wilderness Area, then headed off in another direction.

As if this wasn't enough fun for one month, I also got to go skiing with my dad. We found some discount tickets to Snow Basin, and it was amazing. It had snowed earlier in the weekend, and then it dumped on us on Tuesday. It was a ton of work trying to keep moving downhill, but it was beautiful. It was so soft and fluffy, and kind of warm.

Here we are, managing to stay upright. There wasn't a lot of visibility to be had. But there was some wonderful powder skiing to experience.

So there's what I've been doing the past few weeks. Because I'm awesome.
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