Baby’s First Hike

Saturday morning we got a fairly early start and headed into Salt Lake for the Farmer’s Market at Pioneer Park.

Sunrise over Eden

The last weekend for the market is next Saturday (22nd) and this was our FIRST time making it out to the market It just takes a while to get settled into a new house and new city. The SLC market is HUGE, I was pleasanlty surprised by how many booths and people were there. They even had a “valet bike parking” section that was near one of the entrances – think “coat check” for bikes. Seattle could take a hint…

I was also surprised by the Occupy Salt Lake “march” that was taking place in the heart of the market square – with NO signs, and no commotion. Nick actually thought it was a “tent city” and not a protest. Hmmm…. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, I’d say their message isn’t getting across.

I came looking for two things. Apples and goat cheese. I was successful on the apples alone

Think of all the delicious treats you could make!

We did however find several things we wanted. Farmer’s markets are great for discovering things you didn’t know you wanted or needed until you’ve seen it. Because we were heading out on a hike immediately following, we couldn’t buy anything that needed to be refridgerated. This is ALWAYS the case – we are never popping over to the market and back home, why haven’t we learned this lesson before?? – Take a cooler AND the stroller for maximum buying power

We grabbed a quick lunch before hoppin in the truck and heading for Timpanogos Caves.

I went with the Greek vendor

Nick went for a kabob of some sort

The Cave trail was about 40 min outside of Salt Lake. Even the drive was beautiful.

Heading into American Fork Canyon

We bought our passes to the American Fork Canyon ($6 for the truck) and then our tickets for the cave tour ($7 adult, $3 kids). You have to buy a ticket to go into the caves because it is fully proctored by a park ranger and you go in group of 20 in order to make sure everyone is safe. Even if you could go without a ticket, I’d rather have someone explain to me what the heck I’m looking at and how it all happened.

The hike up to the cave entrance is about 1,000 feet up and just over a mile and a half. Mackenzie walked/climbed the entire way! He then walked through the caves – about 1/4 mile maybe. Pretty impressive huh? This was our first time taking Spencer out on a trail and the Baby Bjorn came in very handy!

At one point we were in the cave 300 feet below the surface of the mountain. We then climbed something like 41 stairs and ended up 500 feet below the surface of the mountain – the park ranger was quite pleased with himself about a riddle “going up stairs to go farther down” – he was a pretty cool dude

On the way down the trail, we told Mack how proud of him we were for doing so much on his own. His response, “yeah, but I took lots of breaks guys.” Yep, he did. “Mack, you can take all the breaks you need, just as long as you keep going.”

Nick and I both have cameras now and we spent a good amount of time taking photos up the trail, in the caves and then down the mountain as the sun was setting across the valley.  Nick took over 200 pictures and I probably have 80 0r so… I’m going to pick through both of our “stock” and post a gallery separate of this post with just pictures. Come back for that – I promise there are some awesome shots!

We didn’t realize that the cave tours would be scheduled the way that they were (hello! not planning!) and we ended up missing out on date night at preschool this week. I was looking forward to going to dinner with Nick without the kids – BUT the hike was well worth missing out on that – there’s always TWO WEEKS from now lol

What were you up to this weekend? Does your city have a year round farmer’s market? Tell me what you think in the comments belows.

**I think every city should have a year round market – they could easily move indoors for the cold months – there’s more to the market than JUST produce. Cheese, crafts, etc are all year round marketable!