Valentine's Day
This year, Valentine's Day was on a Tuesday of a very busy week in school for Dustan. We were already going to be spending money going out for Dustan's birthday in a couple days and going to Bryce Canyon the following weekend. So we kept it cheap with a hike to the Spanish Fork Fifth Water Hot Springs!
We didn't quite know what to expect for this hike because of the winter weather. We knew that sometimes the road that leads to the hot spring trail would close due to the snow, but this would increase the hike by a few miles, which we didn't have a lot of time for. So we brought our bikes! When we got up the Spanish Fork Canyon, the road to the trail was indeed closed. So we pulled out our bikes and road up to the trail head. We had to walk our bikes a few times when there was too much snow on the road, but it was much faster. We got to the trailhead pretty quickly (3.5 miles later) and started the two mile hike to the hot springs.
The trail was completely covered in snow the entire way, but more packed down. We reached the hot springs close to when the sun was setting. But dang, the hot springs were incredible! The color was unbelievable.
We jumped into the hot springs, ate granola bars, and drank hot chocolate until the stars came out. There were so many! Also, since it was dark, and we were 5.5 miles from civilization, everyone else had left, but we had come prepared with headlamps, and stayed until well into the night. We also may or may not have taken advantage of the solitude and worn less clothes than usual ;) Eventually, we got up the courage to get out of the warm water, dry off and put on some clothes in the below freezing weather to hike back to our bikes, and ride back on the icy road to our car. We got some Valentine's dinner at Wendy's on the way home :) It was a very memorable valentines day.
Dustan's Birthday
I'm the worst at taking pictures on birthdays, it is a major flaw of mine. Especially when I love taking pictures of everything typically! It was a fun evening though. We went with a few friends to get all you can eat sushi at Sushi Ya in Orem, Dustan's favorite thing to do on his birthday! He ate himself sick, as usual. Happy 26th!!Weekend in Bryce
This was one of our best winter adventures, so there was a whole blog post dedicated it! You can read it here!Skiing
We were able to go skiing twice his season! The first time, we bought our lift tickets for Sundance weeks in advance. This makes the lift tickets a lot cheaper, but you run the risk of having bad weather. But it was a perfect day! It snowed a ton right beforehand, so we had a bunch fresh powder. We went with one of our favorite couple friends, Ashlee and Adam. It was a great day of skiing.
The second day we went was right at the end of ski season--actually the second to last day Sundance was open. We have a friend that has company lift tickets, so our second day was almost free! And the week before, we had actually done some KSL shopping, so I had my very own skis, boots, and poles to use! Again, it was a really fun day. Though it was definitely spring skiing. The first couple runs were pretty icy. The runs we did just before lunch were just slightly slushy, which was better. After lunch, the sun was so warm that the snow became like mashed potatoes. It was pretty difficult to ski in. And by this time, I was feeling pretty wiped out. I relaxed in the sun at one of the lodges on top of the back mountain while Dustan did some of his own runs.
