After what was a hectic and long Friday evening, I was hoping for a relaxing weekend. I didn’t get to relax as much as I’d hoped, but I did have a bit of fun. On Saturday we drove the truck up Alrad Canyon to find a geocache that somebody had placed last week. I’d been up that canyon once before in my Subaru, and when I couldn’t drive it any farther, I pulled my mountain bike off the bike rack and rode/pushed (mostly just pushed) it to the top of the Book Cliffs. When I was there this weekend I didn’t expect to get much farther in the truck than I did in the Subaru, but the road has been somewhat improved in the last five years–apparently it has “benefited” from all the gas exploration in that area. We drove to within 0.22 miles of the cache, then Mark and I hiked the rest of the way while the ladies and the little ones whimped out and stayed behind. There was a trickle of water flowing over the cliffs and boulders near the cache, and it made the long drive and steep hike worth it.
Sam and Mark’s kids and my kids have been wanting to have a sleep-over lately, so we ended up having everyone over and we camped out in the back yard Saturday night. The next morning we ate a breakfast of pancakes and sausage, then everyone went home and I spent some time tidying up some unfinished work in the front and back yards.
That afternoon, Mark and I again set off to find another geocache, this time just above the Ford Creek waterfall in Price Canyon. I had a vague notion that there was an ATV trail that led to the top of the falls because I’d seen trucks with empty flatbed trailers parked there, but I’d never given much thought to where the trail went. It turns out that it follows Ford Creek all the way to Ford Ridge, and from the short portion of the trail that I saw yesterday, it looks like a great one. So great, in fact, that I took Friday off work and we’re planning on riding up the trail and spending the day in the higher elevations around Ford Ridge. I hope there’s still some snow up there. It seems like summer just arrived, but I’m already looking forward to October.