B-Day #34

Funny how your body gets older yet your mind refuses to acknowledge it sometimes. Even though the calendar (and the mirror) tell me that I am most definitely in my mid-thirties, my mind is still convinced that I'm 27. I've paid a heavy price for that before with sore and aching muscles after ignoring the fact that sometimes my mind has shit for brains. So with that in mind we opted for a much more leisurely birthday hike than the 12-mile descent into the Grand Canyon I had originally proposed. Instead, we drove a whopping ten minutes from our front door to the trailhead for the much tamer, but still quite beautiful Wet Beaver Canyon.

The light was really flat this morning, with a bland, grey cloud cover. So none of my landscape images turned out that great. Though I sorta like how the shadowy junipers kind of frame the walls of the canyon in this one.

While there aren't many flowers out this time of year, the cacti are still putting on a show. The fruiting bodies on both prickly pears and this christmas cholla (pronounced choy-ah) are still out, adding a little extra color to the canyon.

We spent most of the morning hanging out at a swimming hole four miles into the canyon. Here are my girls enjoying some quality time together at our picnic spot. The temperature was ideal and both dogs behaved themselves perfectly, playing in the water together for a good hour then lying quietly next to us as we munched on the gourmet cheese and expensive wine we carried out with us. The eight mile hike was just vigorous enough to make it actually feel like a hike. To top it all off, when we got home I stuffed my face with birthday cake.

Personally, I can't think of a better way to spend B-Day #34.