christmas eve alone

Greetings from Utah and Merry Christmas to you (if that's your December holiday of choice).

The little lady decided to cook a Thanksgiving-style dinner for her family for Christmas Eve, which left me with no plans and no one to hang out with for the day. Being thus abandoned, I decided to get in my fabulous rental car and search for photo opportunities.

My original plan was to stop by my alma mater, BYU, but the plan quickly changed when I got outside and found visibility to be horrible due to a snowstorm. So, after driving around the campus for a couple minutes, I headed further north.

A friend once marveled at how my inability to sleep resulted in me having 30% more consciousness than her on any given day. I think all that consciousness is having a negative effect on my ability to remember things, because I couldn't remember how to get where I was going. I drove aimlessly around campus, and then thinking I go could up into Provo Canyon from there, I drove by the LDS Missionary Training Center and Provo Temple, but that turned out to be the wrong direction. I almost made another wrong turn up a road, but changed my mind at the last minute. It turned out that if I had just chosen the simplest route to begin with, I would have gotten where I needed to go.

The snow stopped when I got a few miles up the canyon, and the sky was mostly clear from there forward. My first stop was Bridal Veil Falls, a waterfall I used to like to visit when I was in college. I had dressed pretty warmly and had also brought a beanie/neck cover combo Becca bought me a few years ago, which turned out to be a good idea, as the temperature had also dropped 13 degrees in the few miles up the canyon I had traveled.

The beginning of the trail to the waterfall:


Except for a few joggers (!) coming off the trail, the trail and falls were completely deserted. This made for a nice, quiet walk and lots of opportunities for cool photos.



Neither the river nor the falls had frozen over, which was a bit unusual considering the daytime temperature in the low teens.





It was under similar conditions that I proposed to Becca at this very spot in December 2000. It was cloudy and cold, and there was lots of snow. It wasn't cloudy yesterday, but there was lots of snow. In the places I walked that hadn't already been packed down by hikers and skiers, the snow went almost up to my knee.



It was good to go back, and I'm glad there was nobody there. There's nothing like having beautiful scenery all to yourself.



I continued up the canyon and made it out to the other side, where Heber City is located. I've always enjoyed this drive, and yesterday was no exception. There was lots of great scenery, but due to the snow on the side of the road and/or lack of places to stop, I wasn't able to photograph much of it. I was, however, able to get some nice photos of the reservoir on the Heber City side of the canyon.







I drove closer to Heber City and then turned off on a road that skirted the edge of the reservoir. I found a place where the water's edge was close to the road and pulled over, but this turned out to be a bad idea. The snow was so deep that my trusty rental got stuck, and no amount of going back and forth in forward and reverse would get her unstuck. Fortunately, I was only stuck for a few minutes before a big pickup truck pulled over, and a father and son got out and offered to help. After a few minutes of pushing plus some rocking back and forth, we finally got the car out of the snow. I decided it was probably best to not try that again, so I didn't get the shots I was looking for on that side of the reservoir. Bummer.

I made my way back to the Provo side of the canyon and stopped at Riverwoods. I decided to see a movie there and had time to kill, so I read a trashy metal magazine at Borders, then went and had lunch at a Mexican place called Bajio. It was like Chipotle and Qdoba, but not as good, so I won't be going back. The movie I watched was "Up In The Air", the new George Clooney flick. There were only three other people in the theater, so I had my choice of seats and was able to enjoy the movie without distractions of any kind. It was a very good movie, and my connection with it was enhanced by the fact that, like the protagonist, I, too, am a corporate whore that travels a fair amount each year. If an R rating doesn't bother you, check it out--it's one of the best movies I've seen this year.

Of all days, Christmas Eve is an odd one to spend alone, but I'm glad I did. It gave me time to re-acquaint myself with a place I used to live but which, for whatever reason, I just don't remember that well any more.