Spring Hollow at Last

Guess who came to town? Godaunt Olivia! We (more specifically me) were so excited for her arrival I'm pretty sure I lost sleep. When she got caught in traffic on the way up, it was like Santa getting stuck in a snow storm. Finally she got here. We hiked, we got home late and sadly Ari didn't get to play with her (he really was pretty disappointed). I had selfishly hogged her all to myself, dragging her up mountains instead of allowing her to play trains in Ari's room. What kind of mother am I? Uuumm, I must be one who sits in Ari's room and plays a lot of trains...

Plan A was to kayak the Oneida Narrows, a section of the Bear River I never did while I lived here, an easy little section I want to do before I leave. Olivia was much obliged to join me. Unfortunately, after monitoring the flows it looked like it was going to be too low (dam controlled). Huge bummer, but it worked out fine. We went with Plan B which was to hike to the top of Spring Hollow (I've made several attempts and never made it); also something on my to-do-before-i-move list.

Note: One such attempt at Spring Hollow is documented here, funny how in this post I never mentioned running down the trail with Ari on my back because a few miles up my "intuition" told me to get out of there FAST! I also have a photo of what appears to be fresh mountain lion sign from that hike... It was after that hike I started telling Joe I needed a gun and he bought be bear spray.

Aaaaanyway. I think Olivia summed up the hike better than I could on her blog so I'm going to do a little cutting and pasting. Oh, and the photos, those were courtesy of Olivia's blog as well. Without permission I might ad, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a lawsuit on my hands.

Four dogs, two inseparable friends, and ten miles. What’s not to love?

Lins as you may know, is moving on to bigger and better things. She’s bored with Logan. She’s seen it all. Well, she has now anyway… there was one hike on her list that she’s tried to do several times, and has been turned around for various reasons each time. Saturday was the day. I drove to Logan, she left the kids with Joe, and we hiked Spring Hollow To The Road. We thought it was maybe six miles. It was a few more than that…. and steeper than expected. We’re both entering Middle Age Territory now, so the hills are naturally getting steeper. But the miles, the hills, the labored breathing hardly mattered. I don’t think we ran out of things to talk about for five whole hours (note: this may have been because we were talking slowly, in order to be able to breathe between each word). Have I ever told you how much I love this lady?

Oh how I love a good friend. Can't wait for my next Olivia adventure.