Hieing Here, There, and Everywhere!

View from the one of the docks of the American Fork Boat Harbor on Utah Lake

Today I'll touch on my recent walking adventures.  As has probably become apparent, one of the most thrilling things I do in any given week is walk around somewhere new.  Exciting, I know. :)  Really though, it is much more fun than at might sound, at least it is for me.  When I was job searching, I would walk a pretty good distance basically every day.  I'm much more limited now, but I still try to get out a few times a week.  In fact, a few recent studies indicate that moderate exercise a few times a week is quite a bit better for your cardiovascular health than frequent intense exercise.

I've missed all the patriotic, god-fearing farm folk!

I'm focusing more on getting in extra walking right now in preparation for a ward activity at the end of the month that has been dubbed "the death march".  We are going to walk 23 miles from the Draper temple to the Salt Lake temple in honor of a pioneer who did that walk every week to help build the temple.  The crazy part is that he did so with a prosthetic leg too!  I may need a prosthetic leg by the end of it, but I'm excited to push myself and see what I can do.  I'm often thinking how much more fun it would be to just walk as far as I can in one direction rather than having to turn around and recover the same ground.  This will give me a great opportunity to do that while also testing my physical strength.  The main part I'm worried about is getting blisters, as that is an area I already have problems with fairly often on my walks.  Weirdly, I get them most often on the outside of my heels.  I've read this could be a problem with the shoe insole, but I think it maybe has more to do with my supination due to Morton's foot.

Anyway, last Saturday, I decided that I would walk to the American Fork Boat Harbor to help get me more trained up for this major hike.  The harbor is about 3 miles from my house, so the whole trip ended up being 6 miles.  I knew that it would take me off the beaten path, I just didn't realize quite how much.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that after I crossed under the interstate, I was basically in the country rather than the city.  There were fields, sheep, horses, goats, and farmland all around there.  It was great.  I almost felt like I was back in Virginia again!  I thoroughly enjoyed wandering across the countryside, but I didn't have so much fun with the fact that it was a pretty sunny and warm day which left me feeling dehydrated about halfway there.  Once I got to the boat harbor, I was very dismayed to discover there was no drinkable water available there, so I was really quite unpleasantly thirsty by the time I got home.

Still, I was cool to see the boat harbor.  I had tried to go there on Friday, but I had gone the wrong way really, which would have been a lot longer.  I turned around before I actually got too lost though, because it was raining spottily and also because as I was getting into the more deserted area, I ran across a hobo sleeping on the lawn of a warehouse facility.  On my mission, I found that most hobos were quite nice, but you just never know, and I didn't relish the idea of being alone in a dilapidated area where a potentially desperate person could get it into his head to attack me or something!  Still, it was decent little adventure, and I got to get a picture with fake Stonehenge that I have long wanted.

American Fork River

Really, at the boat harbor, there wasn't too much too see that was all that exciting.  It wasn't the most thrilling destination, but I still had a good time learning a bit about it and getting to see a bit of the lake.  An attendant there also said in the summer someone is planning to do kayak rentals and that sort of thing there, which would be awesome!  It's also kind of fun how the American Fork River (at least I'm guessing that's what it was) flows into the lake.  A good portion of my journey lay along this river's course, which was pretty despite some of the old couches and whatnot that had been thrown into it in a few places.

There were some interesting sights along the way and overall I had a fun trip despite the thirst and getting a bit of a heel blister.  I also managed to get my nose fairly sun burnt, unfortunately.  It's still peeling.  I guess it's time to be pulling out the good sunscreen now!

This past Tues I decided to go explore the Provo River Trail again after work.  I'd already been up a large portion of it up the canyon as I've talked about before, so I decided to go the other direction which heads through Provo this time.  It was definitely a lot less pretty than the canyon part, especially because it didn't seem to run near the river at all from what I could see.  Instead, it just goes along University Parkway, which is alright, but it isn't especially lovely or anything!  Maybe I went the wrong way or something, but I was underwhelmed.  Still, it was kind of nice to see where it went.  I'm not super familiar with that area, so I did enjoy getting a feel for what was around there.

Here's the tiny part of the Provo River you
actually see right at the beginning when you
go south on the trail rather than through the
canyon from the 800 N trailhead.

The trail also ran right by The Riverwoods, which is an interesting place.  I didn't really do much there that day because I was kind of sweaty and nasty, but I did walk through the thoroughfare, and that's quite pretty.  There was also a guy there fixing one of the mall's big display screens.  He had it all taken apart and was putting something together for it using a big crane.  It seemed like a pretty large job for just this one guy, so I felt kind of sorry for him.  Still, it was interesting to see him doing some of the work on it.

I also had fun with a couple of quail that were quite close to me.  I have an irrational delight in quail for some reason, so I always really like getting to see them.  I tried to get pictures, but they didn't turn out all that well thanks to the sun in the background!  The area was full of quite nice houses and all.  I went past a lovely private school and turned back near a pretty fancy looking Arabian horse farm.

The Tues trip was only around 5 miles but my heel was getting pretty uncomfortable by the end of it.  Basically, my blister from Sat wasn't really healed yet, and a new trip on top of that didn't help matters much.  It's things like this that make me have some doubt that I will be able to actually do the full 23 miles at the end of the month, but I will certainly give it my best.  I'm planning on rounding up some decent runner's tape that is supposed to help with the blisters, so I'm hopeful at any rate!  It's been good for me to have a goal that I'm working toward over these past few weeks, at any rate.

View from the Provo River trail up toward Mount Timapanogos.  You can see the trail and University Parkway right next to each other here.  It wasn't always this close, but not far off for the most part.