This is my 777th blog post! It seems like just yesterday that I had my devilish 666th post, even though that was almost two years ago.
I wish I could say this momentous occasion was going to have a noteworthy post. But I'm really just checking in. I haven't missed blogging on a Sunday in fourteen years, and I don't want to start now!
I'm typing this on my phone, which makes it harder, because I'm staying at a Vrbo rental in the town of Hancock on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It was built in 1910 as a school and was repurposed for apartments in 2019.
On Monday evening, I went indoor climbing for a friend's birthday. Then Tuesday morning, I flew out with my sister and niece to meet my parents, who had driven to Wisconsin. We spent several days staying in Wisconsin Dells before driving here to the UP.
I will fly home on Friday, and I plan to do a more complete post after I get back. If I tried to tell you all about my week from my phone, I just couldn't do it justice.
The three best months for trail running are May, September, and October, and I wanted to use this wonderful time of the year to try out some new trails.
In Mueller Park, past the fee gate, there are several new trails. As I said before, I'm not sure of the rules, but I think I can go in if I'm not using the picnic or parking spots? I did pass a guy with a golf cart and he didn't say anything to me, but he was talking to someone else.
Anyway, I have been on some of the new trails, but I wasn't sure where they went. So on Wednesday, I headed up for an evening run. It was a rainy day, but the rain had stopped, and I was eager to try it out.
I started at the Kenney Creek Trailhead (an old trail), but instead I took the new Bonneville Shoreline Trail, which led to the Hornet Trail, which led to the Maple Syrup Trail. There were some lovely sights and lots of wildflowers. (In 2020, Blogger "fixed" something that ain't broke, and it is so much harder to add photos now. I hope some developer gets punched in the face!)
Cutleaf balsamroot
Showy stickseed
I had been on these trails before, but I knew there had been some new trail construction. After about 2.4 miles, I came to the intersection of a new trail, Perrigrine. I presume it takes its name from Perrigrine Sessions, one of the founding pioneers of Bountiful.
I could have gone past Perrigrine to meet up with the Kenney Creek Trail, which goes to the remains of an old cabin. I wondered if Perrigrine went to the cabin too. But this trail was not very steep, and eventually I realized I wasn't going up anymore, so it wouldn't go to the cabin. During part of this time, there were wild turkeys running on the trail ahead of me!
I got into areas of newly fallen snow, and eventually there were no new footprints or bikeprints, so I was the first person there in at least a few hours. There were various rock outcrops of the Farmington Canyon Complex. These are Precambrian rocks that are 2.4 billion years old!
And then I found myself going downhill, and there was a very sturdy bridge over a roaring creek. This was four miles up the trail, with no nearby road, so it seems like quite a feat to build a bridge there! But I know nothing about construction.
The trail began climbing again, and I expected that it eventually met up with the Mueller Park Trail. But I didn't know how long that would be, and I had to turn around before it got too late.
When I got back to my car, I was at 8.9 miles, so I had to run an extra 0.1 miles to make it an even 9. I'm really pleased that I'm in good enough shape to run nine miles on a whim on a Wednesday night.
My curiosity was piqued, and I had to know how far the trail went, so I went back on Saturday. All the snow was gone, but I did get rained on part of the time. Despite the rainy period, it was a lovely run.
Heartleaf arnica
Wallflower
James' Chickweed
Cutleaf balsamroot
Arrowleaf balsamroot growing on the pipeline
After the bridge, I was determined to keep going until I met the Mueller Park Trail. I hit it just about a mile after the bridge, five miles into my run.
And then I headed down the Mueller Park Trail, past the always-busy Elephant Rock. This was familiar territory, but I more often go there on sunny days, so it was different to be there on a cloudy day. And my BYU boss just happened to be hiking there with his son, so I was glad I was fully clothed.
My plant app calls this twolobe larkspur, but sometimes it's wrong
Smallflower woodlandstar
Wild strawberry
The yellow of dandelions provides a great contrast to the purple of western waterleaf
Arrowleaf balsamroot next to cutleaf balsamroot
Mallow-leaf ninebark, which is one of the first plants to change colors in the fall (even late summer).
Mulesears
Chokecherry
The entire run was about 9.25 miles, and I climbed about 1,300 feet. By contrast, when I run up North Canyon, it's 1,500 feet in a total of seven miles, so this trail was not super steep or difficult. I might have to add it to my regular rotation!
This week I had my first of several vacations this year. Vacations are supposed to be fun, but the circumstances surrounding this vacation are sad.
A few months ago, my brother, David, lost his science job. Unfortunately, this occurred right around the time of the Trump administration, and with all the funding cuts, it is extremely difficult to find science jobs in the United States right now. So he is moving his family to Taiwan, which is where my sister-in-law, Ya-ping, is from. I wanted to visit them in California's Bay Area before they leave. They moved into this particular apartment last year, so it was the first and last time I saw it.
Guys, this is the reality of the Trump administration and DOGE. If you voted for Trump, I'm ashamed of you, and you should be ashamed of yourself, especially if you continue to support him.
I flew into California on Tuesday, and they were taking things down to get rid of them. Ya-ping asked me to take old pictures of my niblings out of their picture frames. As I did so, some of the photographs stuck to the glass, leaving splotches behind. (Good thing we live in a day when the original files are digital!)
This picture is from June 2012, when the kids were seven, four, and two. They were at my cousin's wedding, which they stopped at while they were moving west from Tennessee to California. Seeing the blotches on the photograph is a reminder that that period is long past now, thirteen years later.
The year 2012 is forever etched in my mind as one of the most significant and memorable years of my life: I had my most important editing and geology classes; I got my first internship, which plunged me into an unexpected career in Mormon history; I made various friendships; I first came out to my mom; and of course, I saw these adorable kids in California.Thirteen years later, the oldest, Preston, is in college, so only the younger two, Franklin and Amity, are at home. They spend a lot of time playing computer games, and they objectively aren't as cute as they were in the 2010s.
I got a dose of cuteness instead from their cat, Pudding. I met Pudding when I briefly visited in July 2023, but I got to spend more time with him. He is a playful cat, but he also spent hours cuddling with me.
When the light shone through Pudding's ears, I could see the blood vessels outlining his ears
Pudding and Reggie are very different from each other.
Wednesday and Thursday night, we played Jackbox games. During the game Quiplash, Amity and I had to answer "The three best birthday gifts for a very sad man." We both, independently, put Pudding and Reggie in our answers.
During the days, I spent a lot of time doing reading for work.
On Thursday, my brother took me to a nearby nature trail. It was fun to see forget-me-nots, redwoods, and thimbleberries (which we also have in Utah).
And he also showed he Mortar Rock, a Jurassic volcanic outcropping where Indigenous peoples ground grains. It's kind of a park, except that it's just a block in a random neighborhood.
On Thursday evening, I boarded Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to go from Albany to San Francisco to meet a friend, Dave, I met at the Gather conference in 2023. I was surprised how noisy BART was. I just sat there on the train, instead of looking at my phone. One good thing about this trip was that I got time to just sit and do literally nothing, instead of flitting about from job to job, to chores, to trails, to stores, etc.
Once I got to my stop in San Francisco, I walked through the neighborhoods. It was fun to see the iconic steep roads with the houses close together.
I stopped in a little neighborhood grocery store, since I love grocery stores, and I was surprised to see they sold grapes in paper bags! I have never seen that before. I might buy grapes more often, except that I feel guilty about the plastic. But I didn't buy anything in this store.
And I stopped in a bookstore called Bird & Beckett Books & Records, which was overpacked with books. They happened to have a used copy of a book that a colleague had recommended to me, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, so I bought it. It's about historical memory (in this case about the American Revolution), a topic that interests me.
I met my friend, and we walked through the streets, where there was some kind of street fair going on. He showed me a quirky store that sold various animal skulls and taxidermy items, as well as a few fossils. The employee assured us that everything was ethically sourced—the taxidermy was all secondhand, and all human specimens (!) were retired educational specimens, but I didn't notice any human items.
We went to a Mexican restaurant where I got butternut squash tamales, since butternut squash is almost pumpkin (even though it's not pumpkin season), but the corny outside drowned out the flavor of the squash.
Then I had to get on BART again before it quit running for the night, and I had my last evening with the niblings.
I said goodbye before they headed to school Friday morning. I don't know the next time I will see them again, or Pudding, sadly. It was hard to visit when they lived in Tennessee, and Taiwan will be much harder. But at least they're older now, so I'm not worried about them forgetting us.
If you want to help out, you will not vote for MAGA candidates, so we can restore some sanity to this country and they can come back.
Anyway, that's all for the trip.
You might have noticed that my most recent posts haven't included the AI dreams, because my dreams weren't that interesting, and I'm getting a little bored of the concept. But I did have some interesting dreams this week, including one about a grocery store that had a lot going on.
there are four large moths stuck together in the bathroom, and two of them have pictures of Spiderman on the wings
the woman is annoyed by the Rosh Hashanah decorations for sale at the grocery store
Mark pets the friendly orange cat in the grocery store
the middle-aged man wants a free sample of the pickle deviled eggs at the grocery store
a man drives a van full of people backwards to the shore of the Great Salt Lake
