I hit the trail early this morning. I was excited to be out for a good long hike on a wonderfully cool and breezy Sunday. I got out before the sunrise and this is my favorite time to head into Provo Canyon.
I was going to my tried and true Bonneville Shoreline trailhead. It is a great and moderately easy trail that goes for miles. I had intentions today of doing some off trail exploring.
The trail starts with a 1 mile climb. However, before the end of the first mile, I took a bit of a detour and followed a path down toward the cliffs at the entrance of the canyon. It was a steep descent down. I was interested in going this way because Ann and I had discussed earlier in the week whether or not there was a path to edge of the cliffs. From the path I was on, it certainly looked like there was.
After descending about 200 yards, I was starting to get a little anxious because my fear of heights was kicking in as I approached the cliffs.
Then all of a sudden, I saw an American flag vigorously waving in the stiff breeze to my left. I started to walk toward it and then realized it was perched on the very edge of a sheer rock cliff. I then came to another realization – this flag is the same flag that Ann and I saw last week from ground level.
From the ground it looked so high up and unreachable and here I was, standing about 10 yards away from it.
The video below gives a good ground level perspective of how high the flag is.
I tried to remain calm and take pix of the flag. I shot some video and tried several angles as shown below. However, my anxiety was building and I knew I was going to have limited time before I totally freaked out.
After climbing back up to the trail, I continued my hike. When I got about a mile away from the flag, I was able to take another perspective shot shown below. The red arrow points to the barely visible flag.
All of this happened within the first 2 miles of my 8.1 mile hike. As usual, I came across a few other fun things to shoot as shown below. However, my focus today was on getting distance, so I did not allow myself to get to distracted with photos. Yes, that is possible…sometimes.
I was so happy to have had some exploration fun and to have made a good pace on my hike. While it was not strenuous, going that distance is a good thing. I have 11 days until the big climb up Mt. Timpanogos and I NEED to be ready!
One last ground level shot before I close. I like this one because of the hawks circling around and of course, the moon is in this one as well.
The Umenum 