Our good friend Bonnie came to visit us for the Memorial Day weekend (her THIRD time to visit -- take note, oh my distant non-visiting friends) and to do some hiking and general Utah exploring. Bonnie has two trips planned in upcoming months -- one to Pike's Peak in Colorado (14,110 feet), and a month later, to Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa (19,341 feet)! Wow. So as part of her preparatory training for these hikes, she came here.The first day (Friday, 05-28) was kind of rainy, so we took a drive up to Logan Canyon and did some exploring. We stopped at Logan Cave, which apparently USED to be this really cool spelunking spot (the cave extends about 4,000 feet into the mountain, and is as high as 70 feet in some places, and is reportedly relatively narrow with no large rooms or caverns; much of the floor of the cave is also a streambed as water collects and makes its way to the mouth of the cave and then into the Logan River). However, a few years ago some environmentalist do-gooder :) discovered a rare species of bat lives in the cave (Townsend's Big-Eared Bat), and now it's gated off and you can't go in there anymore. Never mind that people have been going in there for decades and the bats survived just fine, but no more! anyway....
After stopping at the cave we drove up the canyon to the Jardine Juniper trail, a 9-mile, 1900 foot elevation gain/loss trail which leads to the world's oldest Juniper tree (see below). We didn't make the whole hike because of the rain, but the short portion we saw was quite beautiful.
The next morning we headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon to take the Mill D Fork trail to Dog Lake, a popular hike (and one of the few lakes in Utah that allow dogs -- hence the name) located at an elevation of about 8745 feet, and you gain about 1440 feet as you hike. It's about a 2.5 mile hike one-way. Unfortunately, there was still a lot of snow on the upper trail, so we called it quits well before the lake. Still, the day was beautiful and we got some great pictures of the trail and other spots in Big Cottonwood Canyon.
That night we went to the Utah Symphony to hear Mozart's Piano Concerto #27, and Mahler's Symphoy #1 in D Major -- "Titan". Great time, and awesome music.
Educational Moment: The Jardine Juniper is an individual of the species Juniperus Scopulorum found within Logan Canyon in the Cache National Forest. Often credited with an age of over 3000 years, core samples taken in the 1950s revealed that it was actually over 1500 years old. It stands approximately 40 feet tall and its circumference has been measured at 284 inches. Discovered in 1923 by Maurice Blood Linford while he was a student at Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University) it was named after USAC alumnus and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture William Marion JardineIt is a member of the list of oldest trees in the world. (1879–1955).
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