Here and there of late...

 One Saturday morning recently we drove over to Bryce Canyon and rode the Shared Use Path from Inspiration Point and down to Red Canyon.  It is and 18.75 mile paved trail that hikers and bikers can share.  It was very downhill in a few place and very windy/uphillish in other places.  We were surprised how much the wind slowed us down and made us feel out of shape!  We had ridden the very downhill portion during a family camp one year and I had been wanting to do the whole thing ever since.  Fun day.  Bean was our swag driver.  

Another Saturday we drove/hiked out into the burned area off Cottonwood Road to see how it's doing.  It was good to see that the desert is doing its best to recover.  There were green grass, Yucca and Cholla and other green shoots coming up from the old burned plants.  It was encouraging to see that.  

Last Saturday we drove over to see the fire damage in the Jacob Lake area.  There were lots of burned areas, but there was still a lot of pretty forest available too, thank goodness.  We drove to our favorite vista point - Timp Point - and even though the day was very smokey, we were still able to Thunder River waterfall way across the canyon.  We enjoyed the day until on the way home the transmission started going out on the little truck.  We were very relieved to get home without totally losing it.  And of course, we did enjoy cookies from Jacob Lake!  

This morning we rode the West Canyon road in Snow Canyon.  It was pretty damaged from the cloud burst storm of a few weeks ago, but still OK to ride if you kept your eyes out for washouts and sandy spots.  The weather is getting a little cooler, so it was good to go and get out into the canyon again.  

It's a little hard to go many places right now.  The forests and lakes are crammed with people trying to get out of the house since you can't go out to eat, go to the movies or many other things.  We spend way to much watching TV at night since church activities are kind of still curtailed.  Life just feels a little shut down right now.  And there are fires going everywhere in the western states right now making it hard to take a little trip to get away.  So these little outings help.