Amy goes mountain biking in Park City, Utah

Nature!

Love the mountain west. Grew up in Boise, Idaho, and I really miss all the outdoor activities that the mountains have. During our time in Park City, we tried to do as much outside as possible. We did a lot of mountain biking, and we went on a couple of hikes. We were really hoping to see some cool animals...but mainly we saw chipmunks who seem to be used to humans feeding them.....Here are some pictures of nature. The first one - I have no idea what is actually in this picture. I was thinking it was a critter, but I can't find it. I tend to do that a lot....one of the other pictures shows a little chipmunk jumping. I think I got a shot of its butthole....I am not very good at photography, but it is my reality of trying to capture things and moments.

Biking!

We decided to rent bikes instead of lugging them all the way from Indiana. Good choice, although it is such a first world problem to have a bike that is setup just a little differently than your own bike, so it took a little bit to get used to them. My bike had an issue with the dropper post....it would slowly drop down and I would have to reset it every 2 minutes. I was getting quite frustrated with it. I tried messing with it, but couldn't get it. Luckily Jacob was able to fix it so I could stop complaining. It was probably more of a relief for the group than me, haha. I was a bit whiney.

Also... Park City is at a high elevation! I felt like I could not catch my breath. I totally blame this on the elevation, not that I might have been a little out of shape due to my lack of intense riding over the summer...definitely could not have been that. But for reals, I think there was something with the elevation because it wasn't a normal "out of shape catch my breath", it felt different. You can have a glimpse of what it felt like in the picture where I am slumped over, practically dying.

We rode a lot of trails around Round Valley, which was good to get our feet wet with the trails. The trails around Park City area bit more intense than what we are used to in Indiana, go figure. But Round Valley was less of a mountain. Actually it reminded me a lot of the foothills around Boise. The climbs and descents last a long time, where in the midwest, it is a lot more very small ups and downs, so not much is sustained for a long time. Not only were my legs burning on the climbs, but my arms and core were getting very tired on the downhills, just trying to stay upright! Round Valley also had a skillz park area, so one of the days we rode to that and played around there, doing some of the jumps and flowy trails. When I say "jumps", for me it is pretty pathetic, I think you could get a couple of sheets of paper under the wheels. But when I am in the air, I feel like a total badass.

On another day, we rode trails up the mountain that was right behind the house we were staying at. This was more mountain-esque. Skinny trails, rocks, and vertical drop straight down on one side. It was challenging, for sure, but once we got up, the views were amazing. I think we climbed up for about 2 hours straight. Then we rode along a ridge line for a bit, and the downhill portion was maybe 20 minutes. Such a huge difference in time going up and down.

One of the days, we decided to go to Deer Valley and ride the ski-lift up and bike down. I was a little bit unsure of this because I thought it was going to be way too intense, like just a bunch of insane lines and jumps. However, they have green and blue trails, just like skiing. We got outfitted with all the stuff. I was the only one that decided to wear the elbow and knee pads. Opted for my own helmet instead of the full face helmet, which was probably a mistake....more on that later. But after a quick tutorial on getting the bike on the chairlift, we set off to only ride downhill. It was so exhilarating, and there was a lot of fun features that we could play on. Lots of little jumps and table tops, with ride arounds (or you could just go slow if you didn't want to get air). This was great, as it was one of the last days, so we were already pretty tired, and getting to work on downhill technique without gassing yourself on the uphill, was a really good experience. I highly recommend it, as I felt like my skills got a lot better. Unfortunately, I did have a couple of crashes. The first one was a slide-out on a very loose corner. I must have braked at the wrong time, or maybe was just going a little fast on the loose stuff, but I slid out. Luckily, the elbow and knee pads took the brunt of the action, so I was pretty unscathed. No worries on that one. But then, on a different trail, I was riding along on a pretty flat, straight bit. My gears were shifting weird, which caused my foot to come off the pedal. (I have been riding flats for some time because of my sesamoiditis issues.) So foot came off, and I looked down to try and get it back and check out my shifting. I managed to hit one of the only rocks on the trail, which bounced me sideways, into another rock, where I ate shit. My face and chest took the brunt of the fall, so the full face helmet would have been nice. Luckily, I was ok, but it took me a minute to catch my breath and self assess to make sure I was not broken. My face was a bit scraped (and I have a scar on my cheek now), and my chest felt pretty bruised, but I was having a good time and continued riding. Just was a bit more cautious on some stuff, since I realized that maybe I am not as good as I thought I was.

Hiking!

On a couple of the days that we were pretty tired, we opted for hiking instead of mountain biking. This was quite lovely for the legs. Of course, we ended up driving a lot to get to the places we wanted to hike, as we figured it would be cool to find some water falls or something interesting on the trails. The driving was actually very beautiful, and again, reminded me of Idaho. I love driving on windy, mountain roads. We found a cool waterfall on one of the hikes, Donut Falls. So did a lot of other people, as you can see from the pic. We also found a really nice trail that had some optional spurs, and there was some cool lakes on this trail. Also, some interesting rock features, and all the nature that you saw above. A lot of the time hiking, I was trying to just not do dumb stuff to roll an ankle or fall.

General hanging out in Park City!

We did a rental house in Park City, which was just a couple blocks away from the downtown streets. This was awesome, because we were able to walk almost everywhere. However, there was a pretty big hill that our house was on, which required us to walk (or ride our bike) up a very steep road. If walking, we could opt for the stairs that they have that go straight up the side of the hill. Both sucked, haha. We were so tired, and we always had to go up hill at the end of the ride or the day, when we were the most tired. But we suffered through the pain in order to get to the yummy restaurants in town. High West Distillery was one of our favorites. Another yummy place we liked was the Big Dipper, which had sandwiches. And Atticus Coffee shop had some very yummy caffeinated drinks and baked goods.

Highs of the trip:

• Riding a chairlift up and biking down

• Spending time biking with our BFF's

• All the nature

Lows of the trip:

• Crashing my bike

• Out of shape

• The rental car was a weird hybrid, and none of us liked the way it drove.