Hello, My Name is Emily

After a really, really (really, really...) long, wet and cold spring, we were finally able to return up to our family cabin for a long weekend.

They are building a new cabin close to ours. And the county came in to do some major work on the river to prevent our property from flooding again like it did last year. Consequently, there are two new roads: one behind the cabin and one immediately in front of it. It looks very, very different. The road was flooding again this year when we went up. I hear it has dried up now but all of the construction and flooding has sort of turned the whole property into a mess.

But it was still beautiful and green. And the smell. You could blindfold me, take me up there, and I would know exactly where we were just because of the smell. It is fresh, country air and I love it.

We took the trailer to see how Bean did sleepwise. It was nice knowing we had the cabin as a backup just in case. She had a rough time the first night but did much better the second night.

We introduced Bean to our neighbor's swingset and she thought it was the greatest thing in the world.



See what I mean about it being so green?



It's hard to tell how much work they did on the river without having a before picture to compare it to. It is significantly wider and deeper. All of the rocks were brought in. Before there were just cottonwood trees and alfalfa. There was also a bench that my brother put in so my Grandma could come sit and enjoy the river. The spot where it was no longer exists, but they did manage to save the bench in all of the construction. Now we just need to find a place to put it.



On our second day up there we decided to take a drive up Mirror Lake Highway (my new favorite drive :) ) We stopped at Provo River Falls. I've never seen so much water running over the falls this late in the year! And it was chilly, too. We used to go to girls camp up in the Uintah's 2 weeks earlier than when this picture was taken and it was HOT! Have I mentioned I don't buy into global warming anymore?

Anyway. There was definately no scaling the falls today. They were so impressive!





We opted to keep going over the highway to the Evanston side. Here is the Bald Mountain. There was so much snow! (S is going to love that I chose this picture to show you the snow levels.)



It ended up being a much longer drive than I had anticipated. I was prepared with no food or water. Bean got a little cranky. I wished we had chosen to go back via Soapstone.

Until I saw this picture.



I wish that I could escape to a place like this on a daily basis. It's pretty easy to get caught up in the craziness of life. When I think of serenity, this is what I imagine. Now that really long drive doesn't seem so bad.

While I hope that this isn't our only trip up there this year, it feels like summer is coming to a close really quickly. I feel a little cheated that bad weather prevented us from going earlier this year when we had time. But I am grateful that we at least got up there for a couple of days.