AF Canyon Picnic

With the summer days clocking in at 100 degrees, we took some time to have a quick picnic up American Fork Canyon since it's so close.

It's amazing how close it is and yet how far removed you feel from the city. And it's about 25 degrees cooler!

Gma/Gpa Bingham, Meghan/Corey and Saundra/Marshall came too as an added bonus!!

Scout Falls

We've never hiked Scout Falls, despite it being close, and pretty short - 1.4 miles each way.  Well, it was finally time.

This winter was a very high water year, so all the waterfalls are running high this year, so we were in for a treat!

The entire hike, from the very start, was amazing!  It was one of the prettiest hikes we've done.

Recommend this hike to everyone!!!

The trailhead starts at the Timpooneke campground.  So many people go to Scout Falls, someone put a sign to let everyone know this is the right trail

Lots of hike options

Right from the start, all the way though, this hike was beautiful!  So green and lush!

There were several parts of the trail that were wet....and we passed about 3-4 mini waterfalls on the way

Here is one of the mini falls

We finally got a glimpse of Scout Falls

Another mini fall that we had to cross over

The higher we got, the more awesome the green valley looked below

The trail ended...and we weren't there yet..something's wrong.....you have to climb up 10-15 feet of tree roots to get to the final part of the trail

We finally made it!  Matt went on to the falls on the other side

You walk behind this fall to get to the other ones

This is right behind that fall - looking forward into the water

This hike was amazing!!!!   wow......and so short and so close!

Bear Canyon

It's been stormy and cold and rainy for about the past 10 days, and supposed to continue for the next 4-5 days.  But we had one morning, Saturday morning, as a break between storms.  Sunny and somewhat warm.  

We hurried out and went to Draper for an easy quick hike to Bear Canyon Suspension Bridge.  Much of the hike is along the Lake Bonneville Shoreline trail.  Lake Bonneville was a pre-historic lake, about 14.500 years ago and it was large - huge is a better word.  It was more than 1000 feet deep, and spread out to Southern Idaho and Northern Nevada and all of the Salt Lake Valley covering about 20,000 square miles.  With climate change and other factors, most of it dried up thousands of years ago.  But along the mountains, you can still see the line where the shoreline was..and much of it is now a hiking/jogging/biking trail hundreds of miles long.

It was very crowded on our hike! Seems everyone else was taking advantage of the break in weather too!  

After several switchbacks for about 1/2 mile, we reached the shoreline trail

Everything we see below would have been under water

We finally see the bridge

Small mini bridge across a pretty good flowing stream this time of year

Being a suspension bridge, it sways in the wind and when you walk over it

We hadn't done this hike in a few years and it was a good one to do again!  Close and pretty easy and quick..About 2 1/2 miles round trip.