Escape to Cedar Breaks!

 Today we decided to escape the heat and go up and do a few hikes on Cedar Mountain.  We started at Cedar Breaks.  The Wildflower Festival is going on right now up there and it is so beautiful.  We did the Along the Rim to Alpine Pond Lake hike and it was truly a festival of flowers.  The whole place is just full of color right now everywhere you look.  The meadows are either shining with yellow flowers or have a purple haze of flowers covering them everywhere.  My pictures just can't do it justice.  We loved the hike along the rim and then past the pond and then back.  It's a loop hike and it was so cool and beautiful.  We came home to 109 degrees this afternoon.  Up there we were in the 60's.  I even got a little cold sitting in the shade for our picnic lunch.  Now that so much of our wonderful Pine Valley has burned and is still on fire, Cedar Breaks may turn into our to go mountain place.  After lunch we drove around and hiked to Aspen Mirror Lake.  It was beautiful, but sadly the stream that runs out of it is almost completely dry.  I have never seen it so dry before.  We need the monsoon rains to come soon.  Everything is so dry.  But, it was a beautiful day away from the heat and I loved every minute of it.  Oh, on the way home we also stopped by and hiked up to the Kid's Pond at Wood's Ranch.  I had never been up there before.  I didn't get a good picture of it unfortunately.