Labor Day

We took a trip up to Alta, staying overnight with Zoe in the tent. After unshuttering the cabin, chloe noticed something move behind the door and bravely dispatched me to investigate. It turned out be a bat:

which was not very happy to have been woken up, and briefly swooped over our heads before nestling him/her self behind some tar paper.

zoe, as is typical for weekends, was resistant to sleeping and wore both of us out, even before Chloe's friends showed up. She did manage to go to sleep briefly while in the ergo baby though. As an aside, BIG THANKS to our friends Taras and Katie for giving us the ergo baby; it sis so much nicer than the baby bjorn.



Once Chloe's friends showed up, we caravaned up to go to Salmon Lake, but got stuck in very atypical bumper to bumper traffic on I80, and got off the freeway at the next exit (Crystal Springs, I think). We regrouped, and I suggested a hike that I had heard a lot about, but had not done before: the Euchre Bar trail. It's actually very close to our place, and the signs are clear. There is even a toilet at the trail head -- cushy! The trail winds down something like 1600 or 1800 feet of switchbacks under oaks, madrones, and even some bay trees and eventually deposits you at the North Fork, where this an excellent and relatively warm swimming hole





We all went for swims, and dipped Zoe's toes in the water:


before heading back up to the bridge and then back up the trail




The hike back up turned out to be kind of a slog, and we were all totally exhausted by the end. Thankfully, we had Chileno beef blue cheese burgers, corn and a lot of other delicious things (including smores!) to pig out on. We also fired up the soaking tub to sooth our aching calves and thighs.

I probably would have slept quite soundly, if not for the fact that poor Zoe was kept awake by the shriek of trains, which seemed to be coming by every 30-40 minutes or so. Union Pacific had been doing some track work during the day, so I think there were a lot of baked up trains waiting to get out of the valley. In any case, neither chloe nor I slept very much.


The next morning we all headed to the fabulous Oddfellows Sunday breakfast, which they do only a few weekends a year now:


And then drove up to Lover's Leap, to peer over the edge into Giant Gap




The road up the Lover's Leap is a bit worse than I remember it, and the Prius (literally) just scraped by.