Hike to the top of Timp 2010

So ever since I moved to Utah I always wanted to hike to the Top of Timp. Supposedly it's the second highest mountain in Utah, but in the summer you can hike to the top. So The day before Dennis and I were flying home to Washington to see our families, we drove to Sundance and just past it is the trail head. At 2 am we began our hike.  We were well prepared with 5 hour energy drinks, PB and J sandwiches, water, and flashlights. It's about a 7 mile hike up, so we were hoping to get to the top in time to watch the sunrise. The hike started out great, in fact, thanks to the five hour energy drinks we even passed a couple of other hikers! We were making good time! But the problem was there were other trails off of the main trail, and since neither of us had hiked it before we sometimes took the wrong path - and the dark made it hard to tell where you were supposed to go at times. The first three hours were great, a lot of uphill, but it was ok. But about three hours into our hike we both crashed. I remember just sitting on a rock, not wanting to keep going. But we kept going. Once we got up the the lake, we had about another mile to go. And that last mile was super sucky. Basically we were now above the tree line and just hiking on rocks. I just kept thinking no wonder they call them the Rocky Mountains! When you are surrounded by rocks it's hard to tell where the path is, luckily it was starting to get light by that point which helped. As we neared the top we saw some other hikers merging from another trail ahead which made it a lot easier to tell where to go. Eventually we made it to the top, 30 seconds before the sunrise! All we had was my phone to take pictures, but the hikers ahead of us were really nice and shared their pictures with us, so here are a few of them:

Sunrise

View from the top - honestly I think its better from the Y.

We were exhausted - and maybe that's partially due to such a high altitude since we were over 10,000 feet above sea level.

That little building is where you can stay when you get to the top. There really isn't much room up there, and I can't imagine how crazy it would be if it was crowded!

The top was far from what I imagined. For some reason I thought there would be more room to walk around, and maybe even trees up there - definitely not the case!

The way down was really pretty! (once we got past all the rocks) There were so many flowers!

These next few were taken with my camera so the quality isn't as good.

There were a lot of water falls the way we came!

Still some snow

I think we finished the hike around 11 am and it was already getting hot! It was crazy to see some people starting that time of day! So for us Washingtonians, the view from the top was pretty disappointing. Not really exciting at all. BUT - in the light, the hike up to the the lake is really pretty, so for now on when I hike Timp I won't go past the lake. But now we can say we summited Mount Timpanogos!

First Year Anniversary

The first year of our marriage we were poor! We had to use our wedding money to pay our first months rent, but we had a super sweet apartment we rented for only $525 a month - it was a steal! We lived in Foxwood Condos on University Ave and had two bedrooms and two bathrooms! The apartment came furnished which was good since the only furniture we had was a bed. Plus there was covered parking and a pool! Can't beat that deal!

Unfortunately it was only available for the summer, it is single housing the rest of the year. So in August, right when I started coaching volleyball, got called to be Relief Society President, and was about to start student teaching, we had to move. We moved into a much smaller but nice apartment right next to North Park. Even though it was small, and had a little kitchen (we had to get creative with where to keep the food) we really liked the apartment and it was fun being right next to a park. On nice days we'd pack food over and have a BBQ or play catch.

Dennis transferred to UVU and took classes all summer. He took fall semester off of school to work, and started classes back up in January. He was working at Platinum Protection. In February I got a teaching job at the same school I student taught at as a full time health teacher. I also coached volleyball in the spring for Utah Elite Volleyball Club. After a crazy, busy, hectic year we decided we needed to celebrate our one year anniversary and have some fun so we took a trip to Las Vegas!

Unfortunately we had problems with the hotel we were staying with and our trip was far from relaxing. We got there on a Friday night, checked in to our Hilton Hotel (the one just off the strip), then headed to the strip. The next morning we went for a run. When we went back to shower and get ready for the day, we had no hot water! So we called and told the hotel, they said they would fix it and we went to the pool. It was windy! So we swam for a while, then returned to our room. No one had come yet. Finally, after more calls, someone came. After waiting in our room for a good part of the day just to take a shower, they said they needed to give us a new room because the shower was taking too long to fix. So we packed all our stuff and hauled it to the new room, which was smaller. We complained to the management, hoping they'd reimburse us at least for a night, but they just moved us again. So again we re-packed, and moved. When we got to our next room, the key didn't work. So after more waiting, they brought us a new key. This room was nice, but by this point the whole day had been wasted. We quickly showered, got some food, and headed to Phantom of the Opera. While we were driving there, we got held up by a parade of workers going on strike and marching down the street we needed to turn down. The road was blocked off. We were so worried we were going to miss the show! Finally we found a way to turn around (we were sandwiched between cars for a while) and we barely made it on time. The show was good. I was really trying to make it a fun vacation so I suggested we walk down the strip. I spotted a Baskin Robin's Ice Cream so we made a stop. After we ordered and they made our cones we saw a little sign that said cash only. Well we didn't have any cash on us. Why couldn't they have told us that before we ordered and they made the cones! I had to hold both cones and while Dennis went on a search for an ATM to get cash. After what seemed like forever he came back really upset. He had taken my card and didn't remember my pin! Meanwhile the ice cream was melting like crazy, and the workers were just looking at us like, hey - we need our money! So Dennis took his card and went back. Again it seemed like forever. When he finally got back he said the machine wasn't working correctly and he couldn't get any money out. Ahhh! How annoying! Finally the people at Basking Robins said we could just keep the cones. At that point Dennis was so frustrated he just threw his away. We went back to our hotel for the night.

Now, I had been to Vegas 4 times before, so I told Dennis that this would be a fun trip. The whole time he hated it and kept asking me, "How could you have ever had fun before?!" Sunday was our last day there so I really wanted him to see that the casinos are cool, and even though we had had a lot of bad luck, there are some really cool things there. So we slept in, then went to the pool. Even though it was windy, it was in the 70s so you could get warm. Then we splurged in attempt to save the trip and went to the Brunch Buffet at the Bellagio. That put Dennis in a good mood for sure! That afternoon we walked around and checked out a lot of the casinos that we hadn't been to yet. So the last day was good! We will never stay at that Hilton in Vegas again though!

Beginnings

Dennis and I met in Tacoma, Washington at a Young Single Adult Conference for the LDS church. He was tall and handsome, we started dating, and fell in love. That all happened summer of 2008. I moved back to Provo to get my teaching certificate at BYU, he moved to Rexburg to start college at BYU-I. After making freqent trips to Provo, and long phone calls, Dennis asked me to marry him in December and we were married in April of 2009. To see the video Dennis created to propose to me, click here. To see another video we made while we were dating, click here.

Here are a few of our engagement photos (taken by Shaylene Carter):

She also took our wedding photos!

The Why

This blog serves a couple of different purposes. One is so I can become more tech savvy, and the other is because I don't scrapbook, and Dennis and I are already forgetting things we have done. I mainly want to keep track of things that we do - document that we really do go and have fun! So the entries may be long an boring, but in a way its like a journal of some of the events in our lives.