By Skittles
By the time we left our adventures in SLC, it was hard to believe that we had spent a whole month there! As much as I had enjoyed our time playing in the mountains and bonding with our friend Clint, I was eagerly awaiting some play time in the sun. So promptly after our Sportsmans show, we “hit the road again” - headed due south. According to the directions via Google Maps in the iPhone, it had us driving thru Vegas en route to Phoenix. However, after waking up from a nap, I found we were minutes from Bryce Canyon! Ok, so maybe we weren’t going to hit Vegas after all - talk about last minute changes in direction!
It was actually quite cool to visit Bryce while there was still four feet of snow on the ground. The contrast between the white snowy ground and the shades of orange in the rock towers were beautifully amazing and the temps were perfect for a day hike thru the snow! Despite wishing we had a pair of snowshoes to trek into the untouched rolling hills leading down into the canyon, we had a great time following the packed down trail in the snow. 
Torr had a great time too bounding into the snow fields chasing snowballs.
Following our very brief visit to Bryce, we figured that since we were going to drive right past it, that we should stop at the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon, is well, … grand. Large. Expansive. Impressive. For the middle of winter, it was also pretty busy and didn’t have enough signs (or maybe we are just prone to getting lost everywhere!). Since, again, our stay was going to be brief, we decided that we would just do a short hike down into the canyon to see if the view got any more impressive. At the trailhead, I was very surprised to learn that a Boston marathoner had died on the same trail we were about to explore because she was unprepared for the heat and didn’t bring enough water. I guess we all need to be careful, no matter how many miles we can run! The hike proved to be a lot of work to be able to see the same thing we could from the parking lot, so David and I 
both decided that the only way we would want to see the Grand Canyon again is from the river below on a raft!
At this point, our travels to Phoenix were starting to feel like a whirlwind tour of Arizona! We continued south hitting up Flagstaff and Sedona on our way. After pulling into Sedona around 4:00 in the afternoon, we jumped on our bikes and did a quick bike ride around the infamous red rock towers. Our brief trail ride left us hooked and wanting more (unfortunately unbeknownst to us, it was going rain the next day). We’ve had the great luck on this trip of meeting some super friendly folks. That night was no exception! Not only did we meet a fellow biker on the trail from California who invited us to park in his driveway anytime we were coming thru town, but a super cool group of riders just getting done with their weekly group ride. We would like to holla at our friends at the Bike & Bean bike shop. Thank you so much for the beers and camaraderie and also letting us park behind your shop! If anyone is ever in Sedona to ride bikes, please stop by and support this cool shop.
Several times during the show, David and I turned to each other and commented on how the JTree booth had seemingly become the show “hangout” for our friends at the show. And seeing a crowd around a booth, other folks would come in to check out what the “hub bub” was all about. This is a shout out to all our friends who hung at our booth - thanks for stopping by and come hang with us again this summer!
After three orders of the Black Magic Woman roll (our favorite) the server suggested trying the Seared Sable Fish and it was amazing. The night quickly moved on to a local bar where some poser in our group decided to start off with Jagger Bombs. (Ugh, we all know what happens to Skittles after starting with these!) Which were quickly followed by a round of Rusty Nails compliments of Chris. Chris being the proud West Virginian that he is, felt obligated to introduce us to some old time, backwoods, hillbilly whisky concoction, the Rusty Nail (fitting name for a drink that bad!). On all three attempts to try a Rusty Nail, they all tasted the same: strong and bad. There might have been some dancing involved with random bar goers at that place, though not exactly sure as things started to get fuzzy….
As our OR tradition goes, on the last day of the show, Jessica and I get our shop on when all the booths try to get rid of the samples they have to pack up by selling them at cost! We hit up the sales at IceBreaker and KAVU and both got some cute stuff. Jess even got a sweet pair of new mountain biking shades at Native! To continue with our OR tradition, we hit the slopes the next couple of days, taking advantage of our OR passes getting 50% off lift tickets at all the local SLC resorts - SAAAWWEEEEET! We spent two days after the show boarding thru knee deep powder at Snowbasin and Powder Mountain and commiserating on how miserable our lives really are! Can’t wait to shred some nar pow here again next year!
