The Adventures of Kinky Reggae: A Vagabond for Beauty

 Out of order, as usual, but I blog when the mood strikes me... If I told anyone what I did for Labor Day weekend without explaining the reasoning behind it, it would have made absolutely no sense. It still probably won't make sense to anyone but me.  I planned on hiking in my new favorite mountain range on Friday and spending the night in Idaho Falls that night. That was kind of out of the way, but it was about an hour from the beginning of this dirt road that I planned to drive on Saturday. The road traverses the mountains from north to south, so I figured I'd do some more exploring and hiking off that road, then head home Saturday night.  My hike on Friday was a FAIL. There were multiple trails leaving from the parking lot. It looked like the waterfall was located on the southernmost trail, so that's the one I chose. (Oh, I should mention that my new thing is just choosing trailheads from the Forest Service site that have no information about them.) The wide, obvious tra

Since this pandemic started, I’ve been struggling with not having a reason to get up in the morning. Not like, an existential crisis, but literally. I could lay in bed all morning reading Reddit; I had nowhere to go. The two things that are most life-giving to me are teaching and being outside, and I lost both of those things for several months. But today, that all changed. I was out the door by 6 AM; I had waterfalls and dinosaur bones to see! I was on the trail to Palisade falls before 7. The reason for my early start was that the waterfall trails are supposedly crowded, and I don’t like seeing people when I hike. That’s going to be a challenge on this trip since I can’t hike very far with my recovering hip. All the short easy trails will be crowded, so the solution is to go early. I saw a family with young kids on the trail picking huckleberries, and the dad taught me how! I feel so silly; I never knew what huckleberries actually looked like. I love how they taste, but had never see

I skipped some stuff between Phoenix and now, but... I’ll get back to that later. Yesterday I got in the car and headed north for a three week road trip. First stop: Ousel Falls in Big Sky. This was a nice hike because the entire walk to the falls was scenic. However, it was super crowded, and I learned that I do not enjoy hiking with a mask.  Next up was a hike that’s supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a little girl who lures women off the trail and then disappears in the woods. There has also been numerous Sasquatch sightings in this area. Unfortunately, I did not experience any supernatural activity on this hike. When I got back to cell service, I discovered that I didn’t actually hike the correct trail; I hiked the trail next to it instead. But wouldn’t they both experience paranormal phenomenon? And from the trail descriptions, it sounds like I chose the better hike. It was really pretty and easy and I did not want to turn around. My mom thinks this is Hollyhock. Whatever it i

When I found out I had to have another hip surgery, I decided to fit in a little trip beforehand in case I couldn’t hike for the rest of the summer. I wanted to see my friends in Phoenix. My dad was like, “Why on earth would you go to a hotspot during a pandemic?” But I think I managed to do it safely. I only saw people early in the morning or after the sun went down so that way we could just visit outside. I did not hug any of my friends. The only person I hugged was Brian and Denise’s next-door neighbor who seemed to think we were on a date and hugged me twice. Not cool! But that’s another story. For some reason, I did not take pictures with any of my friends. The only pictures I have are from the hike Jesse and I did. I appreciate that he is always down for whatever adventure I concoct. On this trip, it was a hike up Grapevine Creek near Prescott. It ended up being a little more work than I had expected because my car couldn’t make it all the way to the trail head, so that added 3 m

I spend a lot of time looking at maps, and recently I noticed a mountain range that was pretty close to SLC, but I’d never heard any of my friends mention it. I asked around, and no one had heard of it. So I decided to go check it out.  This place was amazing. After cross the national forest boundary, I did not see any other people. None of the trails were on All Trails, so I just looked at the topo map, picked out a trail that looked pretty easy, and started walking.  I love hiking alone because I can just be weird. When I arrived at this meadow, I had a Julie Andrews moment and needed to twirl and sing.  And then I had the idea that I should make a music video. So this was a very slow hike because I stopped a lot to sing and take pictures.  A few days later, I went back and explored the other side of this mountain range. This area was a bit more populated, and this trail in particular was crowded, but that’s because there’s a cold water geyser coming out of this mountain! Also, the t