North of my desk

It's true my job is rarely exciting. It sounds interesting, but it's not. In fact my recent finger injury was not from rock climbing as you'd expect but from clicking my mouse button so repetitively that I have thickened my index finger tendon, making is susceptible to injury. How lame is that. However there are perks. One of them being the building's proximity to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail which I regularly take advantage of. I walk along it during my lunch break and for shorter breaks during the day as you may have noticed from a few of my pictures on my other blog. I have walked as far as Emigration Canyon while at work, but recently I discovered how to hook up with the trail going North. This morning I decided to explore some of the trails at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon before it got too hot. I got a little carried away and a few miles later I arrived back at work drenched in sweat and out of breath. It sure was gorgeous though. I think I'll leave out how far I went in case anyone from work sees this :)

It started out fine with fields of grass going to seed and wild sweet peas. It was this pleasant looking trail that did me in. When the picture is bigger you can see two dear right at the V point of the valley looking at me. I saw them later too.

It was so nice a shady. There weren't any footprints, or bike tracks, or anything. In fact the trail looked really grown over in most spots.

Eventually I came out of the trees and on top of a hill.

This was my view North:

This is looking West towards downtown and the Great Salt Lake:

And this was my view South:

This was almost at my highpoint. I should have turned around at that outcropping of rocks you see below me but I was so far I thought if I went over the top of this hill I'd find a trail along the ridge and be able to short cut back to work down the other side. I was right, there was a trail back and I could even see my building from the top! Yikes I was further away than I thought and way higher up too! I was tempted to keep going, it was so green and inviting but responsibility kicked in and I headed down.

And by down I mean down. It was a direct shortcut down the hill and I had to go down so slowly I don't think it saved me much time. I'd have scooted on my butt if I had a change of pants to go back to work in.

Seriously, who made this trail and what were they thinking. I have a new appreciation of switch backs now. I don't know that I'll attempt these trails during work hours again, but I definitely want to go explore some more of them. I'm currently attempting to recruit Megan. (Megan?)