summer is upon us

Summer is full on.  In the south "summer" is more relative since the warm days start earlier in the year. I tend to think of summer as at least mid-May until Labor day, even though the heat will continue until Thanksgiving. Here in SLC, they seem to take the literal season of summer as the official summer. Most summertime activities really do not take off until July. Davis' job has granted him every other Friday for "summer hours" meaning he gets to leave at noon that day. I asked him the whole month of May when that started and low and behold, it started literally with the season and goes through the end of September, when fall rolls in officially. Apparently we are having an usual summer. I sure hope this is unusual. We have been hitting over 100 on a daily basis for about a week now, although it feels like forever. It is a dry heat so we aren't drowning in humidity as well but it has been fairly miserable. I am desperate for a swimming hole. Ingrid and I spend our days inside now, fans pointing at us. I drink probably about a gallon of water and eat frozen berries to alleviate the heat. Sleeping as been interesting, especially without air conditioning and it's still 90+ degrees at 1030pm. Our landlords said two summers ago it never got over 100. I am hoping the nonsense will end soon.

Before the heatwave of 2013 came and dried out the land, we were enjoying the sunshine and outdoors frequently. Davis and I took a Sunday afternoon to explore a few trails close to Park City. It was dog and bike friendly, so we took Ingrid and maybe someday when we get bikes we can try that as well. All the flowers were blooming. So very lovely.

looking down into outskirts of park city

flowers were in bloom

flowers!

flowers!

 

flowers!

yeah, flowers!

two types of flowers!

wild columbine (flowers!)

All the trails were named primarily after food, like short stack and spare ribs. Made me feel slightly hungry the whole time. It was all fun and games until towards the end. Davis was attacked by a vicious bee. It flew up under his glasses, panicked and stung Davis right under his eye.

pre-sting joy

a little confused about the trails but no angry bee yet

poor victim of bee hate

Apart from the bee sting, it was lovely. Ingrid Enjoyed it. I drove home after the incident due to slight decrease of the vision field.

We have made a new friend here in SLC. Through mutual friends, we found out about a girl from Georgia coming to SLC for Pharmacy Residency. We know it sucks to be new and we like making friends, so we immediately attempted sucking her into our lives. It turns out she is fairly independent and hasn't needed our hand holding but we've really enjoyed getting to know her. In the midst of her crazy life, she took part of a day to hike with me up in Big Cottonwood Canyon. We found a lovely hike called Willow Heights but we decided to call it Wuthering Heights. It probably looks nothing like the setting of the book and nobody was full of weird brooding emotions and secrets, the names just sounded similar.

trail up through beautiful aspen forests

refreshing willow creek

lovely new friend in a lovely land

We hiked up to the Willow lake and sat and chatted for awhile. Everything was so very lovely.

panorama

sky blue sky

tad bit of snow left and ski runs down the mountain

We kept exclaiming how beautiful and unbelievable that this could be 20 minutes outside of the city. Definitely a great, easy, beautiful hike to do. Only bad thing, no dogs allowed.

Hope y'all are enjoying the summer!