New Bike, Raspberry Days, and Moab

We have been having a blast this summer. It seems like it has been one adventure after another...thanks to our adventuresome friends (Josh, Ryan, Mike, Cody, Brent). A lot of the fun has been mountain biking adventures because I got a beautiful new bike. She's beautiful.


but became a slight pain. We will get to that later.

Raspberry Days are quite a big deal here in Bear Lake. They have a small flea market with vendors and activities, they have a parade, and many other activities. We weren't able to make it to any of these because we worked during the day. We decided that we wanted to participate in some festivities so we went to the Rodeo in Laketown. You can't just go to a rodeo without getting into it. So we decided to dress up as Cowboy as we could. It was actually kind of disappointing but we still had fun. We were also able to take advantage of our porch swings for the Raspberry Day Fireworks.



Back to the story of Joey's bike being a pain. Joey had some time at work to clean his bike. So he took off the wheels, cleaned them, and then put them back on the bike....when he did so the disc brake was kinda rubbing so he unclamped the quick release to see if it still rubbed (it didn't), so he proceeded to clamp it back down while the tire and disc brake was spinning and he accidentally put his finger in the disc brake...this chopped the very top part of his finger off and cracked his fingernail in half. It started bleeding a lot and Joey started to feel like he was going to faint, the problem was he was working alone in the boat rental shack. So he grabbed his phone (squirting blood all over it and the floor) and called his boss to come take his place, then called Emily to come doctor him up. It would have been funny if he would have fainted and a customer came up to pay and he would have just been laying on the floor. His finger is doing better.



We were also able to take a vacation this summer with Joshua Jones. The boys were planning a big biking trip but everyone else bailed out on us. We got into Moab on Sunday night and were trying to find somewhere to camp for free. After traveling down a dirt road for quite some time we finally found the free camping. We set up and fell asleep. The next day was the start of our adventures, we started out by going to Arches National Park. We hiked up to Delicate Arch and on the hike Josh and Joey talked and debated about Obamacare. It was actually quite interesting.



Next we went onto Landscape Arch, this arch as you may be able to see in the picture broke due to weather erosion back in the 90's. This was a nice leisurely hike.



After our hiking adventures we needed to cool off from the desert heat. We found this swimming hole, which was nice because when we first got there no one else was there. There are three areas that you can cliff jump off of. It has a nice little waterfall going into the hole. After our first jump a couple more groups showed up so we decided that it was getting a little crowded and that Joey and Josh needed to start their bike trail ride.



The biking trail for the first night was Porcupine Rim. This is a shuttle trail (which means that the beginning trailhead and the end are at different locations). Emily dropped off the boys at the top of the trail. We double checked that they had enough water, snacks, and other supplies. Joey and Josh started the trail which was supposedly a 3 mile incline and then an 11 mile descent. About a mile and a half up the incline Josh's tire wore through to the point that the tube stuck out and popped and so he wasn't able to replace his tube. So Josh had to walk his bike back to the trailhead without any contact to Emily because she was at the bottom of the trail without any phone service. Joey decided to keep riding, he claims that the incline lasted 7 miles. Joey was trying to hurry to get to me so we could pick Josh up. About halfway down the trail Joey's tire popped (when Josh turned he took the bike patch kit and extra tube with him.) So Joey had no way of patching his tube so he decided to finish the trail by running it. Joey was able to run his 10K this summer that he had a goal to do, but he ended up doing it with a bike. After Joey got to the bottom we drove back up to the top to pick up Josh. Then we went on the hunt to see what time the bike shops opened in the morning so the boys could do SlickRock the next morning.


After we got done with the bike shops we headed out for SlickRock. This trail ended up treating the boys a lot better. They only had problems with Josh's bike chain on an incline but were lucky enough to find a random quicklink and fix the chain.





We had a lot of fun in Moab, it was nice to go on a trip and see and do all the things we did. We spent the next day visiting family and looking for a place to live for the school year. Ta da!