Our First Real Hike... Battle Creek Falls; Pleasant Grove

So we had our first real hike today. And I can say that I am VERY out of shape (wait, round is a shape......ok, so I'm IN shape then). We hiked up to battle creek falls in Pleasant Grove. It was a great little hike. The weather was perfect (around 70 degrees). For the first little bit of the hike you kinda wonder where the water is. The reason is that you can see the creek bed but there isn't any water (the creek has been diverted). After the first part of the hike you come to a bridge across the creek and then you are right by the creek for the rest of the hike up to the falls. The trail was in pretty good shape (mostly rocks and dirt of course). Its a steady up hill hike. Liz and I both realized that we need to walk more. We had to keep stopping and our son Brandon just wanted to get to the falls. When you get to the falls its really nice. You can go right up to waterfall. If it had been a hotter day we might have even gotten wet. Right at the falls the trail gives you two options. You can go down to the base of the falls or you can hike up to the top of the falls (the trail actually continues on after the falls but we only went to the falls on this trip. We did both trails. First we went to the top of the falls. Its a great view of the valley below (there is a picture of that below). The whole hike took us around 2 1/2 hours (we spent a lot of time just hanging around the falls). If you just wanted to hike up and back it shouldn't take more than an hour or so. The whole hike is just over a mile. Obviously since this was an actual hike, a stroller was completely out of the question. Emily rode on my shoulders and with Liz for part of the trip. Brandon had no problem walking all the way up and back. As I mentioned he seemed to mostly wonder why Mommy and Daddy wanted to stop so much. We had a great time and I'm sure Liz and I will have a hard time getting out of bed tomorrow :). Until next week...

From the top of the falls

"Hiking" Temple Square

So we "hiked" (aka walked around) Temple Square this past Saturday. I took so many pictures that it was a bit overwhelming to go through them and pick out a few for your viewing pleasure (thanks Liz for finally picking out a few for me). For those who don't know, Temple Square is in downtown Salt Lake City. It is where the LDS church built the Salt Lake Temple. It is surrounded by flowers, trees, and several water features. It is a beautiful place to walk around. We spent a little over 2 hours walking around and we didn't realize how tired we were until we got in the car to go home. When we got out of the car we were surprised to find that we were pretty tired.

Temple Square was a great place to walk around during the Spring. The flowers are gorgeous. It wasn't too hot (or crowded for that matter). We walked around the Temple itself and then walked up past the reflection pool to the church office building. The observation deck of the church office building was open to the public (this is not always the case). I highly recommend that you take advantage of the opportunity if its open when you are there. It was a great view of downtown Salt Lake City. We also had a great view of the Capitol Building. The church office building is 26 stories tall (it doesn't sound like THAT much but when you're at the top, its a spectacular view). Below you will see pictures of the Temple, flowers, and pictures of all of downtown from the observation deck. Today we actually hope to hike again.