Engineering Break

Today we took a short break from skiing/boarding. Since no snow fell overnight and there are reports of snow tonight we decided to wait for more powder & add another day to our stay in Salt Lake. One of us is more enthusiastic than the other about the possibility of more powder. The other claims she's not doing 100% powder runs since it seems to shorten her boarding time. Maybe she needs to just dump her skis and board the powder...not happening, but one can dream.

We also took the time to do our laundry...fun time.

With time on my hands I did what any other self-respecting engineer would do....I pulled out the old calculator and crunched some numbers. Since we left home we have been 10,156 mi. and we have bought 411.5 gal. of gas. The car has averaged 24.7 mpg which isn't bad considering the cartop carrier we're lugging around. Last time we came out west we got about 26 mpg headed west and about 28 headed east. So far it looks like the cartop carrier is costing about 1-2 mpg which is about what I expected.

Now for an observation...drivers seem to be in a 'rushed' state of mind in this area. It's been quite sometime since we've seen drivers like they have around this city. Who knew...last night we decided to take a tally of the bad habits & sometimes very dangerous actions we've seen in our 5 days in the city.
-as we were in the process of backing out of a parking space a car came at full speed around the corner & swerved around us to get to the light...no brake action on their part.
-car driving the wrong way to get to the drive through, blocking the parking lot
-cars (multiple) weaving at high rates of speed on a packed I-15.
-car we had just seen pulled for excessive speed pass us 10 minutes later going at a high rate of speed...multiple tickets anyone?
-how about driving the wrong direction on a 4 lane road about a block in order to get to a cross over (2 times so far)...next to the parking lot speedster this one is jaw dropping.
-rolling stops, no turn signals and speeding are all common.

What a Difference a Day Makes

Today we headed back up to Solitude Mountain for another day of fun in the snow. Let's just say that there was a bit more snow on the slopes in which to play...how about 12 inches more. Yep, a POWDER day to be sure. Since we haven't had very many of those in our 18+ years of skiing it's a bit taxing...as in more work for our brains and bodies so we weren't as able to shut down the lifts.






Hey Cindi, make sure you get the back window while you're at it.









Not quite first tracks, but close











Knee deep in powder. (There may some evidence on my back of a few falls.)






One of us chose to board the entire day and no it wasn't the girl. It's much more fun on powder to fall than it is on the ice. No pain and a big poof of snow when you hit the ground. It does mean that it is harder to get up when you put your hand down and it disappears into the snow without hitting anything hard. Loved the day especially watching everyone else on the slopes whooping it up just like us only a little more loud.

Cindi even received a shout out and new title "Queen of Powder" from some 20 something on the lift.

Here's proof that Bill can ride powder. Tom H., eat your heart out or better yet come on out. We'll meet you somewhere.

A Rather "Icy" Day

Since we've been on our little jaunt to various ski areas we've heard the occasional "man, it sure is icy". We look at each other & laugh. These people have been spoiled apparently 'cause we haven't seen any ICE. At least not ice like we're used to seeing...you know the type...hard as concrete, shiny & fast? Well we haven't see any...until today.

Yep, it took us until we reached the great state of Utah...license plates around here claim the "Greatest Snow on Earth" and "Ski Utah". People even apologized to us about the lack of good snow. We must say that although it was not as bad as Snowshoe can get it wasn't as good as we had hoped. At least when we compare today's snow to Montana's. Guess who wins? We've been told to hang in there because snow is in the forecast tonight, Thursday, Friday & Saturday. We may have Utah Powder yet. I'll stop complaining now...starting to sound like some of the locals. We did find a few slopes to be in much better shape than others so we still had a good day on the slopes.

After lunch we broke out the boards since the light was getting flat making the skiing even more difficult.

Cindi's getting pretty good boarding now. Now that she has the turns down, she's trying to pick-up the speed. She's falling a bit but coming along quick.

OK; OK. I'll Catch-up

I'm 4 days behind, but here goes with catching-up.

I'll be brief. The giant sequoia trees are, in fact, giant and you could, in fact, die in Death Valley. As a side note it would be a really pretty place to die.

Basically, the pictures don't do justice for either, but words will do even worse so I'm not even going to try.

I hope y'all enjoy the pics.

These trees are REALLY big.









































As we drove along one of the side roads we found a grove of some sort of fruit trees outside Fresno...a lot of trees in shades of lovely pink & white.








A red-tailed hawk gave us a pose on an old chimney on our way out to Sequoia National Park. As you can probably tell he really likes his perch & uses it quite a bit.



We got lucky and it had in fact rained several days before we arrived in Death Valley. The desert west of Death Valley had some green and flowers. It wasn't exactly a 'desert bloom', but it was still nice & quite a radical change from the surrounding areas that did not get the rain.





















Coming in from the west, one of the first sights in Death Valley is a large set of sand dunes created by prevailing winds meeting the mountains at one end of the valley.




We had quite a time hiking out into the dunes. Unfortunately we didn't find any Sidewinder's...only lizards. But this guy seemed to like it out on the dunes & in the yellow bushes.













If you double click and zoom way in, our car is back on the road. Cindi was right, the top of this dune was a lot further than it looked.







This guy didn't make it back in too good a shape. We imagine he had quite a bit of sand in areas that he wished he didn't. Sand Angels are probably not a good idea.






In these parts, it's all downhill from here.









At least it's downhill until you get here. This is the lowest point in the US.







This is a look at the mountain behind the sign above. If you double click and zoom way in on the little white rectangle in the upper left, you will see where sea level is...mmmm, hoping for no earthquake
about now.






Pics from a hike to a natural bridge and beyond.





























Hey Cindi, that rock over your head looks pretty unstable.










Don't look down now!











































We found a salt bed called The Devil's Golf Course. The blocks are about 1.5 ft. across and the salt formations are nearly as sharp as glass.


As we walked across the 'course' we found it a wee bit difficult to take closeups...where do you put a hand to get up? What if you fell? Thankfully no mishaps among the crystals...close calls though.






Some great views from Dante's Overlook which was 5,500 ft. above the valley floor.











Only a few of the 1,000 pics we took in Death Valley. (I hope you people appreciate the work I'm doing to sort through all these pics!)


























































This raven had obviously been fed by people. He liked to pose...a lot.







After lunch on the second day in Death Valley Cindi decided she wanted to try out the 4-wheel drive so off we went on a none-to-good jeep trail. It followed a creek bed up into the Echo Canyon area of the Funeral Range. We didn't know how far or where it went, but it was pretty.






















After 10 mi. it ended at the abandoned Inyo Mine. They tried to mine gold here off and on from 1897 to 1941 with obviously little success. Apparently the claims are still valid. (Google's great, ain't it.)















THE END. Oh wait there is a little more below.









After Death Valley we took off for Salt Lake City to ski some at Solitude. There isn't much on the road to Salt Lake City except Las Vegas. But, since that's not exactly our style we did not get any pics.

We took a rest day on 3/3. We drove up to Solitude to get oriented and Cindi went to a yarn store. What we could see of the drive up to Solitude was quite pretty. The road follows a creek up a narrow, rocky canyon with lots of snow. Unfortunately the wind in Salt Lake valley was gusting up to 50 mph which created a dust storm and you really couldn't see much. It looked like light fog; you could see up to about a mile, but pics were just gray.

Tomorrow we ski Solitude if the weather cooperates: wind and possible rain in forecast. We'll see in the morning.