Alta, Salmon Lake, Exploded tire

We drove to Alta today after our customary stop at Awful Annie's for waffles etc. Zoe was in a fairly good mood, but has developed a new and slightly annoying habit of insisting that she walk up and down the restaurant when she should be eating. She is impossible to resist, though.

I did some chainsawing in Alta to clear paths down to the river and bucked logs until Terry arrived, and then we all piled into the Subie. We hadn't been to Salmon lake in ages, so it seemed like a good moderate hike to do after last weekend's snowfest. Unfortunately, the first part of the hike to Salmon Lake was also covered in snow,

and the trail as a whole was a lot longer than I remembered for some reason. We all enjoyed the lake for a while (no desire whatsoever to jump in though!) and watched a family try to catch small catfish at the North end of the lake. After slipping and sliding back to the car, we discovered that the left rear Subie tire was COMPLETELY flat. The car was parked on a muddy slope, which made changing the wheel a little dicey: the jack sunk pretty far into the mud. Happily, the wheel came off without a problem and I had the spare on in fifteen minutes or so. Next came the teeth gritting six miles of dirt road back to pavement. Ergh. We decided that it was late enough that tire replacement was going to have to wait until tomorrow. In the mean time... beer and blue cheese burgers. ZZN was a little backed up, which had been making her understandably irritable all day, and it was aggravated by her being tired. Happily, the dam reached a breaking point right before before bedtime, and chloe and I settled down to a relaxing night into the brand new tent with Zoe. By "relaxing", I of course mean a hellish night of crying, loud snorting noises and random kicks to the head. Zoe managed to rotate perpendicular to chloe and I and repeatedly kicked off of my face in order to head butt chloe. I lost count of how many times this happened, but suffice it to say that we will not be repeating the baby camping experience any time soon. I guess we will have to be happy with day trips. Here zoe is, looking tired after an exhausting night of parent abuse:

See how she feigns innocence with her thumb in her mouth!