San Diego and Salt Lake City

Keeping a blog up to date is a lot harder than I thought. Especially because I'm also keeping a personal diary, updating my facebook page, and sending a lot of personalized emails still. It gets difficult to do all of that, and not get bored with my own repetiveness. I will however, attempt to provide a brief overrun of some of the things that I have seen and done up until now.

I will return now to my days in San Diego... *insert time warp here*... I did manage to check out San Diego Zoo which entailed running from one enclosure to the next for most of the morning, and still only seeing about a third of the entire complex. This included seeing pandas, polar bears, hippos, raccoons, winter foxes, a puma, and some very cheeky gorillas. The one animal that i really wanted to see however, i couldnt find. And that would be the pengolin. The two things that i remeber the most was the hummingbird hovering above the huge silverback gorilla, and the two flights of escalators that take you up through the jungle canopy. Other than that, the zoo was very similar to others I've seen, excluding the variety of animals. I still think that the Night Safari in Singapore was far more thrilling. But seeing the hundreds of squirrels around the place made it worth it :)

San Diego also included a beach ultimate game (which i couldnt play due to my cold), and a four hour sojourne through the S.S. Midway. A naval air craft carrier. It was a mini city unto itself. There were also numerous cardboard cut outs of naval crew around the ship, which when you turned a corner in one of the passageways, proceeded to scare the crap out of you on many an occassion. *shakes fist at stupid cardboard cut out people*

My adventure now moves on to Salt Lake City where I have a wealth of family. According to some cousins though, they can only a handle a day of being my guide due to the amount of walking which is often involved in the activities I choose. (Thanks Taylor!) Some highlights include exploring Timpanogus Cave and having ranger Andy correcting Taylor about 50% of the time on his so called "knowledge"... An image of Taylor walking/climbing down the one and half hour path from the cave. Oh, and the view from the canyon :)I also loved the 7hr sailing voyage in the Great Salt Lake with 'pirates'. Lance, who was my skipper (even though I spent most of the time steering), was dressed like a pirate as the whole trip was supposed to be a historical reinactment of french (and other) sailors going to battel in the lake... or something to that effect. Then the most amazing, and exhausting was my climb up Mt Olympus, which is over 9000 ft high. It's pretty much a continual steep climb to the top which took us 4hrs, with a hand and foot scramble for the last 500m. In total it was about 10km straight up and down, with the poor thighs caning for 5 days there after. But I would strongly recommend my family to give it a go. I mean, you guys live there, how is it possible that you havent seen the top yet? I do however, think I scared off my 17yr old co-climber from ever wanting to set foot up a mountain ever again. More from the pain associated, as apposed to me being bad company.Thats it for now. Other adventures soon (eventually) to be put to print.