Spooky Halloween

Okay so before I get into this crazy hike Ian and I did today, let me start off with some slightly less thrilling updates.

A few people have asked about the email notifications for new posts. I’m sorry they haven’t been working! I did some digging, and it turns out that feature, despite being included in the templates for this blog behind the scenes, actually costs extra money to use. Go figure. So that’s why you haven’t been getting emails at have been at the mercy of my mental health and you happening to check at the right time for a new post. Thank you for sticking with it and continuing to check the site and read the posts! I honestly didn’t think it would be so popular, but I’m glad that you enjoy reading my stream of consciousness brain dump with corresponding photos.

If you’re in it for the photos, this week is a good one :) Anyway, so as to avoid keeping you in the dark about new posts, I’m going to try to keep things consistent and have one new post every week. Likely these will be posted on Sunday afternoons (like this one), so probably best to check for new posts Sunday evening or Monday morning. Hopefully that will keep me accountable for posting more regularly, and it’ll keep you in the loop on a consistent schedule.

Last week I posted before Ian and I went on a hike to Cecret Lake (not a typo, it’s spelled with a “C”) with our next door neighbors, another couple around our age who just moved here from Minnesota. Apparently there are quite a few people here from Minnesota. Who knew?

This past week has honestly been largely uneventful. The biggest news we have is cancelling our Hello Fresh subscription. Two weeks ago, we got a box of warm meat. Last week’s order never even came, and this week was leaking meat. Three strikes and you’re out, Hello Fresh.

Now let’s get to the good stuff. You may have been wondering why this post is called “Spooky Halloween.” I don’t really care for Halloween as a holiday, but this past week has been almost nonstop rainy, cloudy, foggy vibes here in Utah. Friday and Saturday it rained all day and the clouds over the mountains really made it look like the apocalypse was immanent. The fall colors here have been absolutely spectacular, so that plus the creepy clouds has made for the general ambiance of spooky Halloween.

Today we did a loop hike that was very much spooky Halloween. This was an 8 mile loop hike where we hiked up to the “Y”, a giant white painted letter “Y” in the side of a mountain courtesy of the BYU class of 1907 and maintained by subsequent BYU students and/or subcontracted with BYU dollars.

You see the little “Y” there on the left? That was our first destination. You may also note the spooky Halloween vibes here.

This is the view from the parking lot… Yes, the parking lot. This is in Provo, which is in the Utah Valley. We live about 30-40 minutes north in Salt Lake Valley, not that this is really relevant information, just a fun fact. We could see the BYU campus and the football stadium. People are really into college football here.

The hike, a pretty steep incline, from the parking lot to the top of the “Y” was only about one mile, but it was a tough one mile. Back in the day, a “bucket brigade” of BYU students used to carry white paint buckets up the mountain to maintain the “Y.” Now they use helicopters. The “Y”, for reference, is roughly the same size as a football field.

After the “Y”, where most people stop and return back down the mountain to their cars, we kept going up the mountain into the foggy, spooky forest full of cougars and bears and moose. If there ever was anything that represented spooky Halloween, it was this section of our hike. The fall colors were covered in thick fog so much so that we could no longer see the valley below. There was a dark cloud that seemed to be chasing us up the ridge line. The wind was blowing. The leaves were crinkling under our feet. The birds were cawing. We were alone on the trail. The whole scene looked and felt like something out of a horror move. We didn’t have any bear spray. We spent the next four miles hiking up the ridge line and through the woods genuinely terrified that we might get eaten alive.

I honestly don’t think we would have been so afraid of death had it been a bright, warm, sunny day. The whole spooky Halloween vibe really did seem to heighten the threat of death. It was the most stressful but stunning four miles.

All photo credit goes to Ian for taking all of these stunning photos while we sang in the woods to announce our presence to any wildlife.

After the four mile spooky halloween death march, we ended up at Rock Canyon, which is where I did my solo hike last week! I would never have known that the two trails connected when I went there the first time, but this part of Utah is really cool in that there are a lot of trails that connect in sometimes obvious sometimes not so obvious ways. Once we got to Rock Canyon, most of the threat of cougar/bear/moose related death was alleviated. The Rock Canyon trail is much more populated and not in the middle of the wilderness in a spooky cloud.

A short jaunt down the now familiar Rock Canyon trail led us to another junction I hadn’t noticed the first time, this time with the Bonneville Shoreline trail. The BST, as it it commonly referred, is a super long trail that runs all along the Salt Lake area adjacent. I’m not sure exactly how long it is, but had we had a few days, we could have walked home from Provo on the BST, a 40 minute drive on the interstate. So it’s a pretty long trail. Today, however, we were only on it for a short time untl it spit us back out at the parking lot for the “Y”.

Eight miles and change and enough spooky Halloween energy to last a lifetime, we finished the hike, got some Chipotle, and headed home. Now I’m writing this post and you’re all up to speed.

I’m glad we got out to hike today because it was a nice distraction from the major sister bonding FOMO (fear of missing out) I’ve been having since Katie is back home for the weekend. I’m glad she has the opportunity to spend time with our family, but I sure wish I was there too.

I gotta say, though, Utah is turning out to be pretty cool :)