30th

Yesterday was my 30th birthday! After spending time at Matt and Annie Trott's place after church on the 2nd, I came home and took this shot of the first minute of my birthday!

First minute!

After men's prayer at church, Pastor, Terry and I headed to IHOP for breakfast

I took a quick picture after our food arrived

I headed back over to the church at 8:00am to meet up with Russell and Donna Talbot, along with Donna's daughter Stephanie, and another lady from the church, Cindy Lundberg. We were going to make the hike up to White Pine Lake.

Here we are just getting started. Stephanie took the lead, followed by Donna and Cindy, and Russ and I took up the rear.

The trailhead starts at a place called Tony Grove

The white bark of the aspen/birch trees made a good photo subject against the blue sky. I couldn't help but take several of these types of shots.

See what I mean?

"I see trees of green..."

"Tree"-of-a-kind

The trail itself provided good walking, albeit a little on the dusty side.

As I was walking along, came across this and figured it deserved a picture. It looks more like something you would see in Africa than in Utah, but hey, who knows?

Here is one of the little streams that we came across.

The reddish bark and green needles seemed so stereotypical of an evergreen that I thought it was worth the picture.

We came across several trees that had blown down and had been cut away to clear the trail. Here is the end of one of those, with the shadow of a plant on it. I thought the lighting was kinda cool!

About 60% of the trail was on a gentle incline on our hike to the lake. When we reached the summit, the trail took a fairly steep drop down to the valley floor on the other side. After that, it leveled out for most of the way to the lake. Here we see the whole crew, dogs included, just minutes away from the lake.

At last, White Pine Lake.

As you can see in the previous picture, the lake is surrounded by steep rock walls. Over time some of the rock has broken away, leaving this pile of assorted rocks by the water's edge.

While I'm not convinced that I saw any white pines up there, this is the bark of one of the evergreen (i.e. coniferous) trees up there. It looks a lot like a spruce tree to me!

Apart from a hawk or two, a woodpecker, and the folks hiking the trail, we saw very little wildlife. This chipmunk was an exception. He was the first one that I had ever seen up close and had the chance to take a picture of. Cute little fellar eh?

The moon had been visible all day, so I took this shot of Russ playing catch with the moon. Ok, not the most original, but the best I could do at short notice! ;)

As we started back, a few clouds sprung up, providing a different background for another photo.

After returning to Tony Grove and heading back out of the canyon, we stopped back at Russ and Donna's to drop Donna off and freshen up a bit. After that, we drove back into Logan, and Russ and Stephanie took me out for a birthday dinner at Chili's.

Once finished, I headed home, took a wonderful little nap, and watched a movie called "Shooter." Part way through, I received a birthday call from Chris, Janet, Matt, Caren, Meadow and Logan, who all proceeded to sing "Happy Birthday" to me over the phone. There are still several messages on my phone that I haven't listened to yet. So, maybe I'll head over right now, grab the phone, and see what was said!