(written on the 23rd, 27th, 28th, and… 29th 😅 [good golly 😶] from notes taken previously)
Well, I think I mentioned something about how I’d always had great luck crashing for the night at Maverik gas stations when traveling?
Right.
Well…
😅
Today was the first time I’ve ever been kicked out of a Maverik. 😅
And I had a super hard time sleeping anyway. 🙃
The place was insanely busy and loud all night long (blew my mind to hear people with their earth-shaking base blasting at what, 5:30 a.m., maybe?)
😶
When I was finally resigned to the reality that I needed my headphones to pump my ears full of rain sounds in order to block out the ambient noise if I were to have any chance of getting sleep the rest of the night, I went looking for them (despite the risk of knowing I might wake up so much in the process of looking for them that I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep again at all).
I looked and looked and looked, and as feared, I think pretty much fully woke up in the process.
Not that it really mattered, because it wasn’t long after that, I don’t think, that one of the store workers first shook? my van, and then banged pretty loudly on it. 😅
I opened the door, and though I didn’t see their faces, I chatted with them briefly.
They told me to go down the street to Walmart, but the overwhelming majority of Walmarts don’t let people park overnight anymore since they stopped being open 24 hours a day. The change in Walmart policy was stinky for me, as it was super convenient. I would think it was also lucrative for them? (as I spent plenty of money in their stores during my Walmart camping years), but that’s just an N = 1 case. Maybe they lost a lot of money to theft?
🤷
Anyway, I think I ended up leaving the Maverik somewhere around 7:00 a.m.? having gotten maybe three hours of sleep? four?
Not great. 😅
And though I wasn’t going to be sleeping, I did head over to the Walmart, buying a second pair of the same $13 brand, model, and color shoes I did from Springville on Saturday. 🙏
Still no clearance church shoes, though. 🙃
From there, I headed over to Carrie’s parents’ place to pick John up for our little hiking adventure, sending him a text message instead of knocking on the door, as it was early, and I didn’t want to wake anybody up.
Carrie came out with him, which was cool. It’s been… decades? since I’ve seen her (don’t quote me on that, though 🙃). She looks basically the same as she did 20 years ago (which magnified my recent self-consciousness a bit 😅).
[sigh]
The three of us chatted for a little bit, and then John and I headed out.
Originally, I had thought that we were preparing an adventure for the whole family, but I realized it was just going to be John and I.
On the drive south from Bountiful, I got a message back from somebody on Facebook Marketplace who was selling another Google Pixel 8 Pro for super duper cheap, and apparently I was the first person to be interested, as we arranged for me to come later in the afternoon to get it!
He was only asking $175, and we talked about $140. 😲
🎉
I forgot to tell John that there was a place in Lindon that I wanted to stop by to grab some 55 gallon plastic water barrels, but gratefully, he was totally cool stopping to get them.
Super nice to have a super chill friend like that. 🙏
It was slightly challenging finding the water barrels place, as it was all the way around in the back, and the business wasn’t really marked very well. Additionally, the QR code I was supposed to use to pay the guy didn’t work, so I gave cash to… somebody? 😅
I don’t know if it was the person who was supposed to get the money or somebody else. 😅
We also stopped off at Macey’s in Orem to grab water for John and some hiking munchies for both of us, and we made a final pit stop at the long drop at the park by the bridge where you cross the river.
It had been a long time since John and I did our original hike on this trail. I think he might have had little tiny kids?
I could have sworn that he came back up with me another time years later, but he said he had only done the hike once, so maybe my memory was actually just the first time? 😅
🤷
Anyway, we started up, I reminding him that the first part of the trip is the hardest part, because it’s just a steep upward slope. After that, it’s technical, so the pace is slow, and you don’t really get tired, because you’re going slowly.
The end of that first steep stretch finds you arriving at the bottom of the lower cascade of the two cascades of Upper Falls.
It’s actually… not really interesting at all. As waterfalls go, it’s… sort of boring, especially when pretty much exactly one mile down the canyon you have the 607-foot, “double cataract” gem that is Bridal Veil Falls.
But it’s… crowded. 🙃
And the magic of Upper Falls isn’t what you can see from the road or the trail: It’s what’s above that plain Jane afterthought of a falls in Provo Canyon.
To enter that little magical wonderland that I love so much, it’s not… for the faint of heart. 😅 You follow the path up canyon along the bottom of the cliff face until you get to a spot where the scramble up is only five or six feet instead of 30 or… 50. 🙃
Then when you scramble up to the next level and follow that narrow trail/ledge/thing along the base of the upper cliff section for perhaps a hundred yards? and past Lookout Rock, you arrive at “Should I?” boulder option (a perhaps 20- to 30-plus-foot bouldering adventure.
(by the way, other than Upper Falls, none of the names are actually official names. I just like naming things. 🙃)
I call it a boulder option, because you don’t actually have to go up that way. There is another way to get up to the wonderland above Upper Falls, but it’s usually the route that I take down, as it’s a super-steep dirt and rock slide that’s perhaps hundreds of yards long. 😅
Much nicer to come down. 😊
Anyway, after scaling the Should I boulder option, you next scramble up a short but super steep dirt slide, climbing up tree roots before making your way back over to flowing water.
Once at the flowing water, the adventure bounces between creek walking, trail hiking, waterfall climbing, scrambling, and a bit more bouldering.
It’s definitely not a boring hike. 🙃
I really enjoy technical hikes where you’re not just following a path but actually have obstacles to work through as you go.
Often, my hikes involve near constant decision making as to where best to put your feet and hands. 😊
We creek walked a bit, scaled one short waterfall, and creek walked some more until we got to the base of the big waterfall that John and I scaled (foolishly 😅) our first time up.
We didn’t scale it this time. 🙃
Last time, climbing straight up slippery rock, I remember a point during the adventure where I was standing on a ledge looking down at John, and he asked me where I had grabbed on to pull myself up at a certain spot, and I pointed out a large tuft of grass growing on the mini ledge, and John reached up, grabbed the grass, pulled it right out of the mini ledge, and held it up for me saying something like “this grass?”
😆
😅
This time, instead of climbing up the whole waterfall from the bottom, I knocked a path through a large patch of stinging nettle (that didn’t used to be there, darn it! 😆), until we got to a little bouldering scramble that we went up. Once atop the second non-waterfall bouldering scramble, we followed the ledge as it wrapped around to the top of the lower cascade.
Then we scaled the upper section of the waterfall.
Apparently, I hadn’t been as clear as I could have been with John about what the goal was in climbing that second waterfall. 😅
I had been hoping to go back to a point of our first trip where, in order to get above a cliff that was in our way, we climbed an evergreen tree that was growing right beside the cliff–up, up, up until we hopped over to the top of the cliff itself.
I’ve been back up that way before, but I hadn’t seen the tree that we climbed up, and I was hoping to find the tree and document it today. 🙃
Anyway, so we creek walked for a good long way, our feet spending a fair amount of time in cold cold water that John wasn’t quite used to.
He’s gotten soft living in Hawaii. 😜
As we were hiking, he asked me when we were going to get past the first steep hard part.
😶
I think he was partly joking and partly serious. 😆
To me, as soon as we got to the base of the lower Cascade of Upper Falls, we were past the hard part, and everything else from there was “technical” but not tiring.
🙃
I guess his experience was a little different. 😅
When John realized that I had a little side mission to find that tree we climbed up all those years ago, he didn’t feel the need to follow me up , so we split for just a little bit, and I continued my walk up the creek until I found what I’m pretty sure was our adventure tree.
Not sure how it happened, but somewhere between climbing the top of the last waterfall and creek walking up the photo op spot for the cliff tree, I lost my sun hat.
I retraced my steps, but it was like it just vanished into thin air. 🤔
🤷
Oh well.
We made our way back down the creek, down the upper section of the higher of the two falls that we scaled, and then back along the ledge over to the other mini canyon that I live so much. 🥰
One of the first places you arrive at once you reach the other little side canyon is a gorgeous spot where two little micro canyons, each with little creeks running through them, come down those micro canyons in successive waterfalls and then join together before plummeting over yet another drop off.
There’s a little spot right at the confluence where you can, once you’ve cleared away the slippery algae, stand in the middle of the creek and see up both micro canyons at the same time and watch the waterfalls in each as they cascade down and meet at your feet.
Of course, I can’t do it justice with my camera, and over the years, vegetation has blocked more and more of the views of the waterfalls above, but it’s still a wonderfully beautiful place, a secret that few know about.
But there are a few that do know about it, and that was more evident than ever this time, as between the two micro canyons, there’s a little cave that someone has been making bigger and bigger by digging out the floor with a shovel.
And not just a shovel, but somebody went to the trouble of dragging a wheelbarrow up the mountain with them. 😶
I’m not sure exactly what their end goal is. They’ve made it much more difficult to access the cave by filling in the lower spot to the cave with the dirt they’ve excavated from the cave floor.
And it’s not a very friendly cave take shelter in if that’s the goal, because the roof constantly drips water. 😅
And a muddy floor is not the nicest place to be hanging out. 🙃
Many years ago, someone had dug a canal and piped water from one of the micro canyons over through the canal closer to the cave area, but whoever is doing this excavation job is going a lot further now… unfortunately. 😕
They’ve certainly been busy.
We decided not to go higher than the cave area, as it gets a little sketchy from there. It used to be that you could climb another tree next to the cliff face, carefully boulder sideways across the cliff face to a small ledge, and then scramble up an eight-foot drop off to safety above.
The only downside is that if you slip and fall (low risk of slipping and low risk of falling, but if you do), it’s probably a good 30-ft drop?
Not so fun. 😅
One day, I would like to go back. 🙃
As often seems to be the case, I lose my bearings a little bit on the way back down. I know where I need to get to, but I often forget exactly how to get there, and today was no different. 😆
It’s not really a big deal, as you’re going to have to scramble down different places one way or another, but it would be nice if I could just remember an exact trail down so that when I’m taking people who are going for the first time, I can more effectively explain what it’s going to take to get down. 😆
Oh well.
I guess I could just say the way back down contains a mix of short down climbs, steep scrambles, and long slides. 🙃
Speaking of long slides, once you’re far enough down that there are no more cliffs beside you, the next step of the journey is that massive dirt and rock downslide I mentioned earlier.
The ropes people have placed make it a lot easier and safer to get down, so that’s nice of them. 🙏
Still, it can be a challenge for many because of how steep it is.
As I reached the bottom of that big slide and sat waiting for John to make his way down (you’ve got to go one by one, as you can easily knock rocks loose that can hit anyone below you), I got a notification from Facebook saying that the person I was buying the phone from had sold it.
😶
I hoped that meant he was expecting me to buy it, as we had agreed for me to come by later in the afternoon when he was off work, as he wasn’t going to have time before.
Nope.
He sold it out from under me, despite saying that he didn’t have time until later.
Apparently, someone had offered him more money than I had, but we hadn’t done any negotiating, I had just asked if he would be willing to take X price, and he was.
Apparently, the young man had not learned that reasonable courtesy in such situations would be to inform the buyer with whom you would already agreed that someone else had offered a higher price, and to give that buyer the opportunity to match the price before selling it out from under them when you’ve already agreed to sell it to them.
I would have paid the higher price in a heartbeat.
But… lesson learned for me, don’t negotiate until after you’ve arrived. 😕
That was pretty crappy to have happen, because I was banking on that cell phone to be the replacement for my smashed phone. We had already agreed, so I hadn’t been looking on Marketplace for another phone, and I wasn’t going to be in Utah much longer where I was more likely to find a decent price, because of the enormous number of people selling stuff.
It can be a lot harder to get good deals in small towns.
So… I wasn’t very happy. 😅
Gratefully, I was able to manage the emotions and get mostly over it relatively quickly. 🙏
And upon getting down from the mountain, as we were driving back, I found another phone that was a great price, arranged with the young man to meet him at a McDonald’s parking lot right off the freeway in Murray, and bought it from him.
It wasn’t quite as good of a deal, but it was still a really good deal (provided the phone doesn’t have any issues 😅).
Once again, a big thanks to my friend John for being such an easygoing guy. He had ordered subs from Jersey Mike’s that we needed to pick up in Bountiful, and we took about a 10-minute detour to buy the cell phone, which meant the sandwiches were going to be hanging out a little bit longer at JM’s. 🙏
We picked up the food and headed over to John’s in-laws place where I finally had the opportunity to meet John’s kids!
Well… two out of the three, I should say. I’ll meet the oldest tomorrow morning when we go to pick him up from the airport.
Anyway, we ate our Jersey Mike’s, and I spent a good long time getting to know his two teenage daughters (great kids), asking them all sorts of fun get-to-know-you questions. 🙃
Oddly, while I was in the house hanging out with John and company, his father-in-law came in and mentioned that they heard a loud hissing sound coming from my van.
😶
At first, I didn’t really think anything of it, because he and I had arrived, and I had changed my clothes in the van and what not and hadn’t heard a thing, but later in the evening, I went out to take a look, and my front driver’s tire was completely flat.
🤔
I wondered if somebody in the neighborhood was mad that I was parked there? Maybe slashed my tire? Then I noticed that my valve stem was torn, so I wondered if someone had walked by an angrily kicked the valve stem because I was parked in front of their house?
Finally, I realized that my hubcap was missing, and then the pieces started coming together in my brain.
I had noticed after driving through the super rough roads of dinosaur National Monument that my front drivers hubcap was not fitting on solidly because internal plastic had broken.
Well, my hubcap must have come flying off while I was driving back from our hiking adventure, and in coming off, it must have grabbed the valve stem (which sticks through a hole in the hubcap) and torn it.
Pretty amazing that it didn’t start leaking air until 15 minutes after we had parked at John’s in-laws.
🙏
So John helped me get my heavy Jack out of the van, and I got my spare tire out from underneath the back and changed the tire.
Because of all the off-roading that I’ve done, the rim on my spare tire was absolutely caked in dirt, which meant there was a whole lot of dirt on the nice clean cul-de-sac asphalt after I got all the dirt banged off the rim. 😅
Gratefully, the tire change went quickly, we got the dirt swept up and dumped into a bag that I’ll dispose of later when I’m not in a neighborhood, and then I went back in again to hang out with John, Carrie, and their kids.
And now I’m going to take a moment to just say, Wow, I’m really impressed by John and Carrie as parents. And Carrie’s parents as well. It was so cool to see them in action. 🥰
Just one example, when John’s oldest daughter needed to go out and run two miles for school, they didn’t just wish her well and give encouragement, Carrie went on the run with her, and not just Carrie, but Carrie’s dad, too!
Three generations out running together. So beautiful. 🥰
And also weird to hear teenage girls call perhaps my oldest (as in longest tenured) continuous friend “dad.” 🙃
His oldest daughter played some piano that we all listened to, and I played a little bit as well, and we hung out until relatively late.
Beautiful day. 🥰
After bidding everyone good night, I made a quick dash over to Walmart, grabbing some tasty popsicles, and then I hopped on the freeway and headed north to go to the parking area on the side of the freeway that I’d stayed at last time I was in Utah before my medical appointment.
There were rats living there, but they were far too big to get into my van, so there wasn’t really much of any concern there.
It took me a little bit to get the plastic 55-gallon barrels organized enough to have a place to sleep, but I eventually managed to have pretty much my whole bed free, one barrel in the front passenger seat, one on top of some storage bins, and the other two on top of my cooler in the back.
Success. 🎉
One of the barrels did spill some kind of liquid out of it and on to my bed, but it’s all food grade whatever, so it’s not poisonous. 🙃
I veged out for a little bit and was reminded of something I was asked just yesterday… Something to the effect of “are you somebody who sees the silver lining in negative circumstances.”
My initial answer was no, but I amended that by saying that when I’m living in light, yes, but when I’m not living in light, no.
That popped into my head today, because I think perhaps every single time something went a little sideways today, my brain grabbed a silver lining in the experience, and that was really nice. 🙏
I’m beginning to live in brighter and brighter light, and gratitude and finding silver linings are a natural byproduct of living in that light. 🙏
My mom is probably the best example I’ve ever seen of someone who can find silver linings just about everything.
I think if you were to ask her, she would say that it’s taken her a lot of effort to get to that point, but she’s just so positive, and it’s wonderful. I hope one day to be as good as she at finding the silver linings in challenging experiences.
When I’m living in darkness, her continual silver-lining finding is annoying. 😆
But when I’m living in light, it’s impressive.
Thx, mama, for your example and all the hard work it’s taken to get to that point. 🥰
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 