Arches

Louis wanted to go on an adventure, so we headed down to Moab this weekend. On Saturday we walked around some of the easier trails, playing in the sand of sand dune arch and going to the view point of delicate arch with Heidi, Jason, and the kids. We then stayed with Daniel's  cousins down in Peter Springs and got to see the historic cave/springs where it is rumored lots of various bandits and others camped out at on their way through the area. Also, to Daniel's enjoyment, we got to pet/feed lots of alpacas.

Rec Center and Obstacles of Obesity 5k

On Wednesday I went to the Provo Rec center for pretty much the first time. Louis wanted to go rock climbing and I remembered that they had something at the Provo Rec center. That something ended up being more like a bouldering wall and took Louis approximately 1.5 seconds to scale the top of, but it was still fun and we got to spend some time looking at the other neat machines they had. I took a few short videos on my phone and found later that Google had compiled a video using my short ones and even added music.

Then on Saturday I ran a 5k called Obstalces of Obesity. We dressed up in inflatable fat suits and then had to face various challenges. I'll admit, I mostly did it for the purpose of being able to keep the fat suit. It ended up being a lot more fun than I thought though and a lot more challenging. When you are wearing something that constricts your ability to really sweat. It was really inspiring though at the beginning listening to one of the organizers of the race tell her story and her challenges with obesity. Daniel didn't run the race, but ended up volunteering as one of the fat shaming obstacles, hitting people with long poles as they ran by.

Tomato Sandwich Party

I have been a big fan of the idea of community gardens for a while. Currently, we have plenty of space where we are at to garden, but I've been places where there really was no land nearby for me to use for a garden and I anticipate it happening in the future. Thinking beyond just me, I think that gardens liven up communities and there is nothing better than tasting fresh garden fruit and vegetables. We went to an event hosted by the Wasatch community gardens yesterday where we were given free seeds, tomato sandwiches and got to see a beautiful community garden in Salt Lake.

Mushrooming

We went on a mushroom foray a few weeks ago with the mushroom society of Utah. I had no idea that 1) Utah had places that had so many mushrooms (admittedly we had to drive into the high uintas, near the snow line to find them) and 2) just how different mushrooms can be. We found mushrooms that tasted savory and were made into entire meals, mushrooms that tasted sweet like candy and ones that were spicy when you chewed on them. The mycologist and mushroom identifiers were really friendly, even though every time we found a mushroom our first question was "Can we eat it?".

There was also a friendly photographer there whose pictures you can find on his blog.

Here are a couple that we took.

These are spicy, and they look a little Mario mushrooms.

The biggest mushroom that we found.