Our First Weekend in Salt Lake: Fun Nature Edition

My wise sister Katie has been telling me for days to go take a walk to feel better. I finally listened to her, and lo and behold, she was right. Ian and I went on our first official Utah hike on Sunday and I think we’re both feeling a little less sad about this whole ordeal. My defeatist attitude has now improved to mildly hopeful (perhaps a stretch?). At a minimum, the needle is moving more towards neutral. Small victories, people.

Anyway, we drove about 15-20 minutes to a nice town south of Sugar House called Sandy, which is a lovely suburb with tons of cool nature. There are trailheads everywhere with plenty of overflow parking. There’s even a working water fountain at a lot of the trailheads! That is one thing home doesn’t typically have, so one point to Utah for that. The trail we hiked was called Bell Canyon Trail to Lower Falls (All Trails link here). It was a roughly 5 mile out-and-back trail with about 1,500 feet of elevation gain. This is fairly similar to what we have at home as far as elevation gain, but we gained more elevation in a shorter distance that we probably would have at home. The trail started out pretty easy, but about 75% of the way through we started going up, up, up. Ian felt the elevation much more than I did, which was strange for both of us because he’s unfamiliar with the sensation of almost passing out and I’m always passing out. Fortunately, no one passed out and we successfully reached the summit unscathed. Our destination was a beautiful waterfall, which you can see pictures of below. These were the lower falls. There are also upper falls, but you have to climb 3,000 more feet to get to them, which we were definitely not about to do. Maybe one day!

There’s also a big park and a bunch of paved trails and hiking trails near our second Air B&B in the next city south of Sandy called Draper. We are in the guest house of a larger house in Draper, and let me tell you, these houses are NICE. Modern, stylish, huge, probably outrageously expensive. You’re surrounded by 360 degree mountains. I really like this neighborhood. We couldn’t live here because A) it’s way too expensive, B) it’s primarily homes for purchase, and C) it’s mostly families with kids, which we are not. If things were different and we had a couple of kids and a couple of dogs and infinite amounts of money, we would totally live here. For now, we’ll enjoy the week we have at the Air B&B and try not to dwell on what might have been.

Hopefully these photos don’t show up as blurry as some of these other ones have been (sorry about that, I can’t figure out how to make them less blurry on here). Also a brief mental health update: this morning I walked 14 miles (love those Draper trails!) and am now sitting under a weighted blanket in our modern Scandinavian farmhouse themed Air B&B watching Shrek 2 while Ian is at work (more on how that goes later). I haven’t even cried (yet) today either! Shout out to my parents and sisters and mother-in-law for all of your encouraging words and support as Ian and I navigate the complete mental breakdown that is this move. We love and miss you!

Now please enjoy these photos of beautiful nature before the Earth burns completely and it’s all destroyed :)