Because (a) it was Earth Day and (b) it was a New Year's resolution.

This week was Earth Day, and while that doesn't have the same status as the other holidays, I like to spend time outside, so I opted to complete my first running New Year's resolution: run to Elephant Rock in Mueller Park.

This wasn't new, because I ran there twice last year (one time I walked down after running up), but it was still fun.

I took my phone with me to document the experience--and taking pictures gives me an excuse to stop to catch my breath. But I don't usually run with my phone, and my current phone is bigger than my old one, so I worried it would either fall out or pull my shorts down. (I don't think anyone wants to see me run pantsless.) But I got used to it bouncing around in my pocket. Now, the pictures are purely for illustrative purposes, not for aesthetic purposes. I make no claims to be a photographer (especially with a phone on a cloudy day) or to have an artistic eye.

I see lots of blossoming trees in people's yards (including mine), and I love them, but this was the first time I'd seen a blossoming tree on a trail.

I took this picture a mile and a half up the trail. (My Fitbit literally said "1.50" miles.) The large rock in the middle is the destination.

Last year I was intrigued but weirded out by these little yellow flowers, and now I know that they're glacier lilies. They're starting to wither in the lower elevations, but they're abundant higher up. They're weird in that they face downward and then have petals that curl back.

There were a few arrowleaf balsamroot flowers, but these are more abundant on lower hillsides--so abundant right now that they color the hill yellow. They're not autumn leaves, but they have the same effect.

There were still some patches of snow, but not too much. And thankfully not too much mud.

There are a few bridges crossing streams, but since I've only been up there in June and September, I haven't seen as much water.

These flowers were near the top (and by "top" I mean Elephant Rock, not the top of the mountain). I think they're wallflowers, but I'm not sure. If they are, we have a lot in common.

I made it to the rock! I know someone who got to the trailhead about the same time I did, and he later seemed a bit surprised that I ran up it before he biked up it--but I did get a bit of a head start. I really don't mind sharing trails with cyclists. I'd rather not share them with motorbikes and horses, but they're allowed there. At the rock, my phone told me there was a WiFi network available, which was a bit surprising.

Then I didn't take any pictures on the way down, because it was getting dark, and because I didn't need a reason to stop for a breath. Round trip, it was six and a half miles, but I didn't feel like I had to run six miles; I just felt like I had to run three, because downhill was easy. It was a thousand-foot elevation gain.

And to counterbalance all the pictures of pretty things, I thought I'd put a picture of a not-pretty thing--chewed up food. In the last few months, I've enjoyed making various vegetable soups (carrot, celery, cauliflower, spinach), so I decided to make a Thai-style carrot soup that used an obscure vegetable/herb, lemongrass, which had to be purchased from an Asian store. Since I (a) am not Asian and (b) had never used it before, I used portions of the plant that I wasn't supposed to, and the soup was full of stringy, fibrous inedible pieces. I don't know whether I liked the soup, because the lemongrass kind of spoiled the experience.

The orange tint comes from carrots, and the green spots are cilantro leaves. I'm fine with both of those. But not with stringy stuff.

It was like eating weeds. I remember reading an article that in 1855 and 1856, some pioneers "ate so many weeds during the summer that [their] skin became tainted with green." I kind of wondered what would be so bad about eating weeds, but now I know.

But frankly, turning green sounds awesome.