Provo Area Parks

We arrived at Utah Lake State Park around noon on Saturday and found an Ironman competition going on with the park being the ending point. After fighting our way to the campground we decided on a spot in the loop with the shower house as it is much nicer to shower using someone else's hot water and not our LP as well as having a decent amount of water pressure. What we didn't know at the time was that there are small gnats or midges, not unlike lakeflies, that are quite prolific near the marshes of Utah Lake. Bill opened the door to let Dozey out and a ton of them got in and are sitting on the ceiling. I got up on Saturday night to take some pain pills and I could hear them in a swarm sounding like angry bees.

We decided to take a drive back up Highway 189 through Provo Canyon which was the way we had gotten here. There were a ton, and I mean a ton, of state parks along the Deer Creek Reservoir between Heber City and Provo

The first side road we took was Squaw Peak Road that went up the mountain. There were many breathtaking views and a nice drop off on the passenger side on the way up which I was not too fond of.

At the top there was a scenic view of most of the city of Provo as well as Utah Lake as you can see by the video below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provo,_Utah

Some of Provo's more famous residents include, of course, the Osmond family and former quarterback and football great Steve Young. Another really interesting fact, for us Wisconsinites at least, is that there are only THREE bars in all of Provo. Very strange to us as it is a city of almost 120,000!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridal_Veil_Falls_(Utah)


Our last stop on Saturday was at Bridal Veil Falls. That is the one in Provo Canyon, not to be confused with the famous Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite!

Near the top of the picture you can see why it is called "bridal veil". The two streams of water actually look like a bride in the middle with a long veil on either side.

The falls from top to bottom is 607 foot tall as seen by this picture looking up from the base.  There is a switchback trail which leads up to the left side of the falls that can be taken by people who want to hike to the base, which is where the water ends in this picture.

 But of course, as always in life, there are people who don't want to be normal and who want to climb up to the base of the falls via the swift downward flowing creek that you see here in the bottom middle of the picture.

So, of course, one of those not so normal people had to be Bill. He says he never would have been able to do the climb when he was smoking and during it wondered if he was going to have a heart attack! He forgot to take a camera with him but said he'd pass on the second climb in a day just to get pictures.