Great birthday in Great Basin

I've legitimately forgotten how old I am several times since I turned 21. For some reason that was the last age I cared much about, ha! Now life is just life and I've got Ryan and we're just chuggin along and age doesn't really cross my mind ever. Weird. 

For my 24th (had to think about that for a sec) birthday this year, we decided to plan a camping trip to one of our favorite national parks, one that's made several appearances on this here journal of mine. Great Basin National Park in Nevada was a discovery we made just a couple months into our marriage, and we were so happily surprised with how wonderful it was. It does get busy on holidays and during the summer, but when you go on the shoulder season, it's dead, and it's so awesome! October was a great time to go. 

We haven't been able to get up to the bristlecone pines in our past visits, which is a travesty considering how I worked in dendrochronology for so much of my time at BYU! So that was our main goal with this trip, aside from having some birthday fun in a pretty place. We took off on Friday night after work and while we drove, I opened my birthday cards from my family (blushie smile emoji). Loved them! I have the best family ever. Including my youngest sister whose card was smothered in pictures of babies and a "subtle" message to have some nieces and nephews for her right quick. Ha! Sarah... [: 

 We got in late at night and found an open site in one of the newly redone loops of Upper Lehman Creek campground, which were super nice! New picnic tables, fire rings, and bathrooms, and really quiet. We woke up on my birthday to crisp, chilly, gorgeous sunshine and started up the backpacking stove for some pancakes.

 The itinerary for the day was simple: bristlecone pines, alpine lakes, and later a dinner/dessert combo of beef stroganoff and a Cinnabon. Stellar day in my book!

(We had a great site! We had good sun, good shade, perfect seclusion, and a little family of deer nearby that kept its distance but was always around for us to watch.)

We packed our daypacks with PB&Js, bundled up (it was around 34 degrees!), and headed up to the trailhead.

I love hiking with Ryan!

The trail was a bit treacherous in places because of ice and packed snow. In a couple areas I started getting worried that we'd have to turn back for safety reasons, and it didn't help that we passed several parties coming our direction who didn't make it to the bristlecones because it was too icy for them! Props to Ryan for keeping me going, worrywart that I am. We took it slow and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery around us, slowly moving from dense fir forest to the telltale talus and more sparse trees that meant bristlecone territory! I was getting a little crazy excited at this point. Ask Ryan.

And then suddenly we were T H E R E!!

These trees. They are just so amazing. They are thousands of years old. Like we're talking germination dates in the before-Christ range! They are evolutionary geniuses, and just plain gorgeous to boot. They were seriously more like sculptures than trees and I wanted to stand by every single one and just look at it, wishing it could tell me its stories!

It was fun to see some signs of increment borers and dendrochronologists at work. Made my heart happysad. Such a fun time of my life. I had cored bristlecones before, but they were barely 100-200 years old. Just babies compared to these!

Wheeler Peak and its surrounding cliffs towering above us were just gorgeous. We wandered the interpretive trail and read the plaques about each tree with jaws dropped. 

The rad bottlebrush needles of bristlecones. So fluffy looking. Their form is forever burned into my brain after spending a whole weekend scrambling up and down red canyon walls in Utah lookin for these guys. [: And these needles themselves can be up to FORTY years old before they fall off! Incredible.

^^^ This guy has been around for over three thousand years! His first growth ring? 1,230 years before Christ. Think about what he's lived through. The first Olympic Games, the Roman Empire, Confucius, Alexander the Great, the Vikings... Can you imagine?!

And then there was this guy. HE WAS AMAZING. And there wasn't any sort of plaque or anything to tell us about him! Honestly, I thought maybe they didn't want to draw attention to him and risk any damage or sneaky business... He had every telltale sign of insane age, which often doesn't include size, though this one sure had it! Windworn skin, incredible twists and turns, a crazy root system that had obviously been effected by erosion, signs of fire, lots of different leader branches from over time. He was a sight to behold.

We hung out with him for awhile and we're good friends now. [: Seeing him seriously made my day.

So, so pretty. The air was so clean and cold, and the sunshine was lovely. It was perfect weather.

I love my hiking partner.

I take pictures of him while he's talking to me. Teehee. He's the cutest.

Had to hug one. ^^

We eventually spotted the perfect lunch spot in the sun, but it was already occupied by some other hikers, so we sat a little further down the trail and legitimately waited just for the purpose of nabbing that lunch spot once they were done. ;] #worthit

We spent a couple hours just wandering around, and it was heaven. It was everything I dreamed and wanted it to be!! I've officially been in the midst of some of the oldest trees in the world. The pilgrimage is complete. [: Then we (mostly I) sadly waved goodbye to the bristecones and we headed back toward the main trail to continue on to the alpine lakes.

First Theresa Lake, which was beautiful but tiny this time of year. It was more like a pond, but of course a super pretty one. [: 

I heard pecking above us and eventually spotted this pretty guy! A Clark's nutcracker finding some lunch in a dead tree. We just stood and watched him for awhile. It was great. [:

Then on to Stella Lake! 

Wow. So stunning.

Ryan working his runway walk.

A few miles later we completed the loop, practically RAN for the trailhead bathrooms ;) and then headed back to our campsite. Perfect birthday hike.

Thanks, Wheeler Peak! Thanks, bristlecones!

Driving back we spotted a little group of wild turkeys. We'd seen several on the trip, and previous trips as well. They're so fun to watch! We'd hear them randomly gobbling to one another off in the distance, especially in the area of our campsite. It always made us giggle, and usually call back to them with our best turkey gobbles.

And the colors! Holy cow. They were toward their tail end for the year, but there were some gorgeous patches of aspen scattered throughout the park that were just on fire.

Back at the campsite, we took a fantastic nap (Tent naps are the best kind of naps! A cozy sleeping bag, birds singing, sun shining, bugs buzzing - it's heaven), and then woke in time for a quick snack and a fabulous star-gazing program at the visitor center. Through the giant telescopes we saw a couple star clusters, examined the gorgeous moon, and learned about our incredible universe! Let me tell you - we've been so impressed with GB's star parties. They've got stargazing down. Glow in the dark paint and red lights everywhere to help you keep your night vision while you navigate the parking lot and stuff... They know their stuff!) With it being the shoulder season, there was probably only about thirty people there, a stark contrast to the almost 100 people we were with during our last summer visit! It was awesome. Hardly any line to wait in at the telescopes.

It was pretty freezing once the sun was down, so once we got "home," Ryan built a fabulous fire, I started up the backpacking stove, and soon we were sitting in our camp chairs, soaking in the warmth and eating one of my favorite meals in the world - beef stroganoff from Mountain House. Haha. Don't judge me for deeming dehydrated backpacking food as some of the best in the world. I blame my upbringing. [: It was the best birthday dinner!

And of course, cake! We toted a Cinnabon along with us for my birthday cake. Best substitute ever. As long as we don't think too hard about the calories. ;)

The next night was probably on of the coldest nights I've ever camped through! We didn't sleep so well, with how many times we decided to get up and put more layers on, but we were able to sleep in in the morning to make up for it. Oh sleeping in is so lovely.

The next morning was so still and quiet. It's one of my favorite things about camping. So serene. We walked around a little, made breakfast, and then started packing up.  

Little details of the desert. I love this park.

Our little deer friends again. The perfect goodbye to Great Basin!

And a video! Here's to a million more birthdays and camping trips with my man by my side. [:

The summer that flew by

I'm going to whine for a second.

Why did no one tell me that once you become an adult, summers are almost nonexistent?

I really was not aware of this, and it took me until August when I was like, "Hey! It's summer! Wait, this is summer?" to realize that we had it so good before as kids and college students. This sounds a lot more depressing than I meant it to, but really, we've seen how working full time changes things. I'm pretty worn out from being on my feet in the lab for 8 hours, so when I get home I just want to go to the gym with Ryan and then relax. Plus limited vacation time is like 'Hi. You only get two weeks a year to do fun things,' and you're like 'Whatever you're not the boss of me!' when actually it is so you stay home. Though Ryan and I are lucky to have companies that take pretty good care of us PTO-wise, I somehow wasn't able to convince my supervisor that I needed the usual two months off like students have. ): Wut. Dare I say I would even take back final exams if I could just get that glorious summer break again?!

Warm summer evening walks, making sure to visit the neighborhood horses!

But then I look at the stuff we did during this flash of a summer and I feel okay. [:
We had so much fun in the little time we had! So here's our summer picture dump of the random stuff we did in between the more planned-out vacations I've written about on here.

First of all, we moped about Europe. Ohh did we mope and moan and reminisce. We looked through pictures way too often and I really truly thought about it at least once every five minutes!
Okay now that that's out of the way...

Working at a water treatment plant, it makes sense that our busiest time of the year is summer! Demand goes up and the number of tests we have to run goes up accordingly, and boy did that make the days fly by even faster. I loved the sunny sample runs and the laboratory bustle, but I don't miss those 80-degree temps in the lab... Broken AC system + basically non-insulated building built in the 1950s = sweating lab techs in their lab coats and rubber gloves.

Summer also meant wildfires, including this one brush fire that forced us to evacuate the entire lab for most of the day. Luckily I was out on the sample run, so I just watched from afar and crossed my fingers that maybe the TOC machine would get burned up so I would never have to run it again. ;] Just kidding.

Mariah's bachelorette, complete with lip sync battles (Molls and I practiced ABBA's "Gimme Gimme Gimme" for weeks leading up to the event. So much fun.), chocolate fondue, and relaxing in the pool, and of course, the blessing that was Molly's homemade cake. Can we just take a second to appreciate:
 
#bachelorettepartymormonstyle
Ha! Roomies for life!
Except when you get a new roomie. Who is a man.
I love these ladies.

And of course the much-anticipated wedding. Mariah looked SO gorgeous and it was the happiest night. [:

One of my tippy top priorities for our apartment was getting our front room shipshape with pillows and pictures on the wall. Checked off the list! Also, our wedding pictures and my watercolor prints from Paris that I finally got all framed up always make me smile.

Sunshine & croquet with my girl. She is a goofball, and we often end up ditching the boring adults to go play. ;] 

So we also went through this pizza phase. I think it started in Europe, with the most amazing pizza I've ever had. And when one of my best friends/roomates from BYU told us about a place in Salt Lake that had the most authentic pizza in Utah, we ran full-tilt to SLC for a try and we fell in love.  Settebello is now almost sacred to us. :O

And then this awesome place called Pizza Studio had to move into Orem (and then Lehi too! We are surrounded. Very happily so.) so naturally we started frequenting that place like nobody's business as well. So so tasty. Not as authentic (yes, we are self-certified pizza snobs now) but so fresh and so good on a summer weekend.

My summer work party up at Snowbird Ski Resort was definitely a highlight of the summer. What a gorgeous place. Utah is amazing! We put the unlimited passes to good use and rode the alpine coaster, chairlift, gondola, and alpine slide till we just couldn't no more. Then of course did a little hiking. The wildflowers were stunning.

Another of my top priorities for our new apartment was to get a washer and dryer(!!!) to put in our laundry room(!!!). As far as we're concerned, this is the ultimate step upwards out of the student world and into the adult world. Those years of dragging your huge bag of dirty clothes to some seedy laundromat and dealing with other people's wet clothes hanging out unattended in the only available washing machine and then cursing the heavens when you realized you don't have enough quarters? DONE. GONE. Hello real world. We have arrived.

KSL is our best friend for like the seventh time.

The chore of laundry might have even gotten a little more fun for a couple weeks.

 

Aforementioned pizza-loving, Italian RM best friend and I were due to hang out, so she came over and taught me how to make gnocchi and bruschetta. They were both incredible. And how white I am in this picture depresses me so much. Another sign of our limited summer. ):

Also hanging out with Molly for some of her Mom's delicious Asian chicken salad and chats out on the grass. I love this lady.

Ryan's work offered us a couple of tickets to a BYU football game! It was so so great to be back on campus! It was also weird for Ryan and I to be there as no longer students, but alumni. Wut. It was bittersweet. I looked around at all the students surrounding us and felt a little jealous. I wanted to shout to all of them "Do everything fun you possibly can and meet everyone you can possibly meet and jump on every good opportunity that ever comes your way and do all the crazy things that cross your mind!!!" because man what a good time of life that was! Thinking about it just fills me with warm fuzzies and gratitude. Choosing BYU was one of the best things I've ever done. I love that school and the memories of my four years there!

Also Ryan bought me my first-ever Cougar Tail (two-foot long maple donut for those who don't know) and it legitimately made my night because maple bars + BYU = everything good in the world.

Watching the super moon with Riley (or superman has she called it). 

Space sure put on a good show for us! And so did Riley.

And other little happys like pet sitting the cutest kittens ever, mini golfing in the hilariously dumpy fun center in Lehi (Ryan beat me), and RSL games (not so happy due to RSL wiping the floor with the Sounders that particular evening. Hence our facial expressions, respectively. Ryan didn't even tell me he was going to take a picture. My face was legitimately like that and he just stuck out his phone and took a photo.)

All in all this first summer of real adulthood was a good one with best friend by my side. [: I love making memories with this boy. Bye summer!