I Killed My Television....Literally.

 I have got to do some awesome rides here at home in Sanpete Valley.  I enjoyed some great evening rides and had a great one last Thursday night and I felt great so I rode hard.  I happened to take some pictures.

This is the Flume Trail and it is the most packed down I have ever seen in all of the 15 years of the trail life, especially this early of the year.  There's been a lot of riders this year!

Great map of Flume and Pioneer trails, I haven't gone on the Pioneer yet and I hear it's great this year.

I have been riding on more flat roads because I haven't been feeling good most of the hard rides in the past first of the year.  I wanted to do more endurance kind of riding and it helped.  I rode a lot on the dirt roads in the west.  The ride I like is to take the dirt road from town and through west of the Manti/Ephraim airport and to the houses on halfway through Highway 89 and ride on the 4 wheeler doubletrack off the side of the highway until Manti.
Then from Manti, I take the dirt road down west passing by the radio station and ride north along the dirt road by the West Mountains all the way to Ephraim.  The ride is 25 miles and takes about 1.6 to 2 hours for me.  I like this ride and I am trying to ride my mountain bike more than my road bike.  I haven't ridden my road bike for like 3 months now.  I don't like the cars on the highway when I ride my road bike.  Never did.

Also, I had more time to redo my parent's main bath.  Just tore everything apart and put in new cabinets, countertop, sink, floor, toilet, bath hardware, and put in new trim.  It looks great!  The new toilet is awesome, it actually flushes poop without using the toilet plunger every time!

Memorial Day Weekend Ride

 I went up on a little trip with my parents to Tooele to put flowers on graves and see some cousins and also to spend time with my sister up in the Ogden area.  I took my bike with me to tuck in a ride during the weekend.  My family decided to come with me and have a picnic while they were waiting for me while I ride my bike a little.  Luckily they found a perfect spot with a picnic table but about when I was done with my ride, we were kicked out because we didn't pay a fee.  But still we all had fun while we enjoyed it.   

 We went to the North Fork Park campground near Eden, UT which was up in Ogden Canyon.  There are some sweet bike trails I wanted to try out.  Plus the campground is where one of the Ben Lomond trailheads are.  The trails I wanted to try out were Mule Ear and Mule Shoe trails.  Great trails except I didn't feel good that day but I took it easy on the climb and walked up the steep sections.

At the top was a beautiful view of Ben Lomond Peak in a distance in front of me(look at the top picture).  I climbed about probably maybe around 500 to 1,000 feet of elevation.  Maybe less though.  Then after that was all downhill until I reached the bottom of Mule Shoe Trail.  Mule shoe was the lower elevation part of the loop and below the campground.  The downhill was awesome though.  Enjoyed it.  Lot's of shade and trees with a bunch of berms at the turns.

It was great how there were no people on the trail, and I was surprised, because it was Memorial Day weekend.

 Down at Mule Shoe, I ran into two moose.  The first one I ran into was just sitting there off the side of the trail for a Sunday rest.  I stopped and looked at it, she didn't move.  Until I got on my bike again, she ran off.  I even got a good picture.  Later, I continued on some more trail and all the sudden a bull moose was in front of me and I startled him.  He started running down the trail through the turns and everything.  I slowed down a lot to let him run away from me.  Then finally there was an open area where he can escape from the trail.  It was pretty cool to have a moose do some biking with me for a while there.  I called him Bullwinkle the Moose.

I was this close to the first moose I ran into, don't see that in Sanpete.  There are no moose in Sanpete so that's why it's so cool to me.

This is after the bottom of Mule Shoe right after the trail goes right along the side of a stream and this where you start climbing again to get back to the campground.

These trails are probably my favorite trails in the Ogden Canyon area besides Green Pond Trail in Snowbasin.  I would like to go there again and make sure I feel good and wired next time because I would like to experience these trails going fast.  It was very fun still.

Price is right!

So, I went back to Price and decided to do the whole deal this time, all the trails showing in the map, and it was hardcore.  Last time, in March, I did just Luke's and S'mo Joes, it was fun but i was wondering what is it like going further north.  Going north had more climbing and more technical kind of features.

The trails further out north were Meads Rim, Floating Rocks, Lollipop, Shamrock and Roll, and Yoo Hoo.
They were all awesome, except for Yoo Hoo, which was a worn down trail that nobody rides anymore and cows destroyed most of the trail.  I should have tooken Floating Rocks back down but oh well.  I did walk most of Yoo Hoo on the way back.

 Floating Rocks was a fun climb all the way up but it would have been a fun, fast downhill if I took it instead of Yoo Hoo.  But maybe next time!

 At the end of Lollipop which was the north point, it had good views of the town of Kenilworth.  Didn't know there was a town there.  It was cool.  I stopped there for a while and ate a snack.

 Town of Kenilworth

On the way back, I took Shamrock and Roll and that was my favorite part of the trail system.  It was fun, fast, kind of stuff and had some switchbacks and still had some good views as I rode along the ridge.  Then after that was Yoo Hoo which I should have never taken.  But after Yoo Hoo, I took the ride back on S'mo Joes and that was really fun.  I remember I got so tired and my hands felt fatigue and I got sick.  But after 13 miles of total ride and 2 hours, I made it, and it was hot.  I couldn't wait to cool down at the top of Skyline at Fairview Canyon on the way home.  It was nice and cool there.  It was a fun ride and since it's getting hot there, it's probably time to bike in the mountains where it's cooler.

Vernal Trip

 For the past five years I have been going back and forth to Roosevelt/Vernal, UT for work.  I work as a builder in a home building company.  We have been building a lot of stuff in the Roosevelt and Vernal area which is the area where the oil boom is.  So we get quite a bit of business there.  I have been wondering how the mountain biking is in the area.  I decided to take my parents and spend a weekend there.

 In fact, that weekend was my birthday so I wanted to go for a birthday ride.  I went to the McCoy Flats Trail System.

The trails were great and they are similar to the St. George trails but has way cooler weather, so it's perfect for the summer rides if you want some desert riding.  I actually enjoyed it better than St. George because of less people and the environment.  I ran into a few people and it was on a Sunday morning and very early but not too much.  I had so much fun and the trails had so much rolling hills and singletrack.  They were especially fast.  There were also a quite of few technical riding in a few areas that had slickrock and boulders.   I did Retail Sale and Milk and Cookies.  After about 15 miles, I wanted to do more but had to get back.  Next time, I will go alone and go camping at the primitive camping spots at the trail head, then do more riding.  There's like 35 miles worth of trails in the trail system.

The day before I went riding, my parents and I checked around to see some dinosaur bones.  We went to the museum in Vernal and the quarry in Dinosaur National Monument.  We felt bad there were no kids with us.

 Cool looking bones.

 Allosaurus

We drove around everywhere, we even went to Dinosaur, Colorado.  A place where a kid dreams to live(because of the name), but the town was a dump.  We drove quite a ways around Dinosaur National Monument.  It was cool.

There's the mammoth from Ice Age movie.  So awesome!

 More pictures of the trails.

Miraculous

These are the before and after pictures of my finger I cut with a utility knife at work not too long ago.  It's amazing how the body heals in a matter of 3 weeks.  It really got me this time.

No bike? No ploblem.

My family planned a Park City trip to see some Lego art and celebrate my nephew's birthday at Mcdonald's.  Usually every time I think "Park City", I think, "bike".  That is sometimes a problem for me.  It's all psychology, pretty much all my whole life going to Park City, it has to be mountain bike related.  This weekend when we went, I figured it was too early in the season to bike because I thought there was still snow.  So, I decided to not take my mountain bike.  For the first time!

 But when we got there, I was seeing there were a few places I can still ride, like on the south face low elevation rides.  I think the only trail you can ride in the middle of April is part of Glenwild Trail.  I felt disappointed that I didn't take my bike and there was like three hours of free time when we got there.  But I had fun just relaxing and staying in the motel and shop for a few things anyway.  I bought some hiking shorts and cycling tights at the outlet stores.  The next morning, when everybody was in the motel room after a while, I was getting claustrophobic and I decided to go drive around and see if there were skiers jumping I can watch at the Olympic Park.  But there was no one there, it was dead silent.  Then I drove around for a while and I saw like a group of 100 road cyclists on this back road I was on.  I don't know if they were doing a race or a group ride, but whatever.  It was cool.  Then I decided to do a little walk.  The walk turned out to be a 2 hour hike, I was enjoying myself.  I hiked up on Glenwild Trail and I got a little rain on me and enjoyed being out for a while.  See?  Who needs a bike?  You can always go for a fun hike.  I saw a quite of few bikers on the trail and they looked like they were having fun, but anyways, it was fun hiking too.  I was like trying to tell them, "Hey, hiking is fun too!"  I was trying to get my mind off of bikes, oh well.

Later that day, we went to Mcdonald's and to Kimball Art's Center for a family thing and mostly for my nephew's birthday party.  At the Art center, there were quite a few Lego displays this guy made, they were pretty cool.  Here's a few of my favorites.

I had a good weekend and next time I will take my bike no matter what.  Unless I don't have 3 hours to spare or there's a blizzard out there, or I'd just rather go hiking.

Magnificent Ride

Last weekend, since my older brother and his family were in the Moab area, I decided to go down too.  To do some mountain biking and camp a night.  I left really early that morning and got to Moab around 10:00 AM after 3.5 hours of driving.  It was really nice, beautiful weather.  Up in central Utah where I am from, was really chilly and cloudy but when I got to Moab, it was delightful.

 I was really stoked to go for a ride and I wanted to do a long one since it was a perfect day and I haven't done a ride like in a week.  I decided to do some of the Maginificent Seven.  First, I started at the top and rode down Bull Run with lots of rocks and technical kind of stuff.  It was very fun and all downhill, I enjoyed it so much.  Then I went down on Arth's Corner which was the same as Bull Run and all the other trails I did that day.

After riding on Little Canyon Singletrack, I turned onto Great Escape Trail and met some other bike riders and talked to them for a while.  They were nice.  Great Escape is one of my favorites, I did it before like last year or so.  It had real good climbing and a lot of obstacles to go over.  Also great views!

 Great Escape

 At the end of the Great Escape Trail, I stopped to look at Gemini Bridges.  Then I did a return ride on Getaway Trail which was the least technical trail.  It was more sandy a little faster to ride on because it's been packed down to ride on.  It was a climb all the way up and you know how I like climbing?  Because it gives me an awesome workout.  At the end of Getaway, the ride got technical again.  I was planning to take a shortcut to Seven Up to finish the ride but I was so worn out and it has been about 3 hours.  I drank all of my water and ate all my food by then and I was really tired.  So I took the Gemini Bridges Road back to the trailhead  just to shorten the ride by 2 miles.  I am glad I did that because I probably wouldn't make it up on Seven Up.  I wanted to do part of Seven Up but I got to listen to my body.  Oh well.

According to the map, I did the figure 8 ride and loved it.  It was great riding.  That night, I went to my brother's camp and pitched my tent and had good time with my niece and nephews and sat by the fire under the stars.  Moab always make a good trip.