Jess & Neal-ville

This weekend found us camping in Ciabets Flats in Cleveland National Forest in California, a small area outside San Diego. We had a grand ole time and Jess was finally about to make the hiking just fine without her knee destroying her. As an update on that, Jess ran in the Phoenix half-marathon in January. She made her best time since she ran her senior year in college (2 hours, 18 minutes). She had originally planned to use it as a training exercise for her first FULL marathon, potentially in March or April somewhere in California. Around mile 10 her left knee started causing her much pain, but assuming it was just from stress…she ran through it. She gave herself a few days to recover, then went back to training. Since then, she has not been able to run more than 2 miles without her knee causing her tremendous pain. Nor is she able to hike down sharp inclines. She has had x-rays and a MRI done, but nothing was found. Currently she is going to physical therapy to determine what can be done to help.  It seems at least some improvement has been made. The hope is to start training for a triathalon! Well, that is Jess’s hope, and odds are she’ll be able to rope Neal into it eventually.

For the camping trip, we started out with hiking down to some falls. We did roughly a 3.6 mile hike in total. We had planned to do much more, but our blue heeler baby girl, Jada, got a little over excited and tore up the pads on her paws. She couldn’t do much walking! So we finished up that hike, having to carry her some of the way! She is recovering nicely though, and is enjoying lounging on the couch and occasionally being carried outside and in. She does adore the attention.  Because we couldn’t do any hiking on Sunday, either, we called it an early day and headed back home to have a nice lunch out and go swimming. All in all a good trip!

For the July 4th weekend, we headed out to San Diego! Yesterday we arrived to purchase Jess her own pair of Vibram 5 Finger Shoes, which she has been eyeing for quite some time. Now the two of us can get made fun of in the grocery stores by small children…haters!  We went to the San Diego Brewing company, as we are doing a brewery tour across the United States. Well, more like, Jess is doing the brewery tour, and I get to taste some and provide her transportation.  Then off we went to the San Diego Safari Park. We spent the afternoon there and had to head to the hotel because Jess procrastinated on her homework and had 4 assignments to finish that were due before midnight. Don’t worry, she completed them.

Today is off to SeaWorld! Jess will ask to fit in another brewery…and then who knows what we will do the rest of the evening. Probably a nice hike is in store.  We will post pictures soon.

SAN DIEGO WOOT!

Reprieve, by the way, is defined as: a temporary relief from harm or discomfort.

Salt Lake City was quite enjoyable! We enjoyed the 70 degree weather and not having to wear a jacket all the time! We enjoyed the zoo, which is quite a nice one.  Whenever we are in a big city, we do make a point to visit the zoo…so we have been to a number of different ones across the country. Atlanta, Nashville, Seattle, Memphis, Knoxville…and now Salt Lake. Am sure there are other ones in there, but those are just to start.

After the zoo we went to THIS IS THE PLACE…which is it’s actual name. We were a little confused as to what the actual POINT of the place was, but we enjoyed a nice train ride so it made it worth while.  It seems like it is normally a living museum which represents what Brigham Young saw to choose Salt Lake as the final destination for the Mormon migration…but as it was ‘dead’ living museum on Sunday, we weren’t quite sure.  We then enjoyed all-you-can-eat sushi!  Which is normally a GOOD thing except Jess decided she wanted to do a MORE-than-you-can-eat sushi extravaganza.  It took a little while for her to recover…

We went to Red Butte gardens after that, which was GORGEOUSLY in bloom.  We definitely enjoyed our time there and wish we could have stayed longer.

Finally we found our way to the Salt Lake City Temple. Of course we got a tour from some of the local missionaries, and we will probably be receiving a visit from missionaries as well in Casper.

We are back to the swing of things again in Casper. Unfortunately we came back to winter weather advisory and got 4 inches of snow last night with snow throughout the day.  Have to keep checking our calendar to make sure it’s May.  Jess sure does miss the sun!  We are counting down our days until our Austin vacation…it can’t come soon enough!!!

Sun Worshiping Jess and Neal

This post finds us, as you may have guessed, in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Although we will still have to catch up on what we HAVE missed posting for the past week!

Jess was originally scheduled to work this weekend, but at the last minute her boss needed to switch weekends with her.  We are still planning our trip to Austin at the end of May, but both of us just needed to get away.  Since neither of us have ever been to Utah, we decided why not visit??  Our friends had mentioned how beautiful Salt Lake was…so that’s how we chose our destination!

We got here around 4 this afternoon.  Unfortunately we were reminded that this is Mother’s Day weekend, AND the NBA playoffs are going on IN Salt Lake.  Sadly for the Jazz, they were defeated by the Lakers (which we found out afterwards).  We enjoyed dinner at an organic cafe, walked around downtown, and saw The Hubble in 3D.  To end the day, we refreshed in the La Quinta pool.  We are now relaxing with Jada and Kodak and about to go to bed so we can start early tomorrow!  We got passes to enjoy the city so we have plans to visit the Zoo, the Tabernacle…and other exciting scenes!

Traveling Jess and Neal