Word of the weekend= LOST

FRIDAY
For my birthday last June my wonderful grandparents bought me GPS because I got lost alot especially in this new land in the west. I have used it alot to cross the country and just get to the grocery store, it has saved me so many times. Well Utah is set up on a grid system and the first thing everyone tells me is how easy it is to get around. The numbers go up or down but then you have to know your north east south and west. It has not been the easiest for me to pick up on, although lately I feel like I have understood it better, so I went to an activity around Murray. I thought I could do it all on my own, but this map shows how confused I really was! The light blue line in my trip there and the dark blue is on my way home. I must say that it was an adventure and while trying to get there I just kept laughing at myself, I mean it is better to laugh at your misfortunes then to really worry all that much. The one thing I was worried about was running out of gas, stopping to fill up was an option but I was in some pretty sketchy parts of town and didn't really want to pull over and get out of my car. I mean it was 1am on a Friday night.

SATURDAY

Morning: I was sitting doing homework and I looked at the temperature and it was 55 degrees! I could not stand to be inside sitting around working on homework. So I decided I wanted to explore Utah more and go hiking. I looked up a place at the bottom of a mountain called Little Cottonwood Canyon which seemed like a nice hike that I could accomplish in a few hours time. Well this time I took my GPS but I couldn't plug in the exact address so I tried a round about area. Needless to say I never found it, but I went up into the mountain and had the chance to see Snowbird Ski Resort which was pretty neat. If I was dressed right I would have stayed and learned how to ski, but I wasn't prepared for that. Instead I drove back down the mountain and found a place called Dimple Dell (which I laughed alot when reading the name), but it was a neat place to walk around. When I thought I was going hiking I was thinking back to hiking in Pennsylvania where it is green and lots of trees, Utah is not like that. I miss that part of PA, but I still was able to get out of the house and enjoy the great outdoors on this beautiful day in February.

 I love the Utah mountains! I will never get over how beautiful they are to me. Not like the rolling hills of PA

Saturday Night: I was with my friend Jake tonight and we wanted to see if Daybreak Lake was frozen or not. I didn't expect it to be since it has been in the 50's the last couple of days but regardless it was frozen. I figured that it was a thin layer of ice on top and not solid enough to stand on, but of course we had to test it out. We started by throwing rocks on the ice to see if they would break it, some places did so we moved to another area. We were at the end of a dock and rocks weren't going through so I sat on the end and started stomping on the ice. Nothing happened.  We both had a slight fear that once we fully stepped on it we were going in so I let Jake go first. The area that we were in ended up being about 3 inches thick so after Jake was skating around I figured I was alright to try it out too. We slid around for a few minutes until Jake was testing out a different part and we heard CRACK! I have never seen anyone move so fast! We got off that ice instantly and made it safe and dry to the dock. Then we decided to walk around the lake and for some reason they are doing work around one of the bridges and had it fenced off. We took a detour and walked across anyway, but after that the lake seemed to never end. We kept walking and walking and walking, oh and it had started to rain not long after we had been there but now it was raining a bit harder. Since it was so dark out we really couldn't figure out where we had started and where the car was. We came to another bridge and thought it was where we started but it turns out there are 3 or 4 that look exactly the same! Once we realized we were lost I just had to laugh because that was exactly how my weekend was going. Jake wanted to pull out his phone and google map where we were and how to get back, but I didn't want to because I hate how reliant people have become to these new smart phones. We could figure this out by continuing to walk. We eventually found that car after being soaked from the rain. We knew we were going to right way when the rain was finally hitting our backs instead of our faces, which was a lot more comfortable.

 

Ariel view of the lake. Can you see how we got lost!?

One of many bridges, but it is so beautiful!

Side note: Funny story. We were throwing rocks on the lake and I tried to softball pitch a smaller rock and I let go way to late and sent the rock flying backwards. I screamed a little fearing that it was going to hit Jake but luckily it didn't. When I went to turn around to see where it landed I tripped backwards on another rock and landed on my back. I was laughing and when Jake turned around he was laughing and confused as to how I ended up there! It's a no wonder I left the pitching up to Nichole and Christine!


I once had someone ask me how my sense of direction was and I did not lie and told them it was horrible, but when you get lost it is always an adventure (as long as you aren't on a strict time limit). I have found it better to just laugh and go with it. 3 time in one weekend was a little much for me but it made my weekend more entertaining that's for sure!