Lessons Learned in Wyoming

1. Before any trip to Yellowstone the movie Buffalo Rider should be viewed in order to be sufficiently excited about buffalo. We didn't see anyone riding a buffalo, but we did see some great buffalo shirts.

Jennifer was a champion buffalo shirt maker. Chris, Ashley, and Brandon were merely champion buffalo shirt wearers.

There was some buffalo on a buffalo.

2. We are very easily amused by throwing rocks.

3. The best time to be at one with buffalo is in early morning fog.

4. When faced with an animal that could eat you, run towards it. Most Yellowstoners seem to adopt this action.

5. The earth does some crazy things.

6. How to be in touch with Chris' inner Ansel Adams

7. The Grand Teton National Park is one of our new favorite places.

8. Jennifer learned that rafting isn't as crazy as it appears on TV.

A big thanks to Chris' relatives who took us rafting, it was a pretty fantastic trip.

We didn't start a fire

We kept our 4th of July safe by not setting off our own fireworks, so we went out to Thanksgiving Point instead. Chris still loves taking pictures of fireworks and wandered out into this field to get these shots.

Triathlon Triumph...or at least third place

As our friends like to say, we committed athletic suicide this weekend. The race was a sweltering one down in Green River. On Friday we hopped in the river for a short swim, but before we hit the water Chris' mom saw some fish. So Jennifer and Chris' mom made Chris get in and splash around to "scare the fish away." The river was warm and very slow near the finish. It made Chris pretty nervous about the race.

Chris didn't sleep much that night; Jennifer slept a little better. We all awoke nice and early to eat delicious breakfasts of EFS and clif shot bloks. The race site was just a hundred yards from the campsite so we just took our stuff over and headed up to the swim start. Luckily the current upstream was much stronger. Chris' parents took off in the olympic wave and we waited around for the sprint race to start. Jennifer got out of the mile swim in 8th overall (3rd woman) and Chris came in about a minute and a half later.

The bike seemed to get off to a decent start. Chris saw Jennifer about two miles in when she was coming back from the first turn around. Unfortunately Chris didn't take the turn around sign very literally and added an extra half mile onto his bike. This made him ride hard for the last nine or so miles to try and make up lost time. As Chris started seeing people coming back from the second turn around he yelled to Jennifer that she was in 3rd place. Jennifer's thoughts were, "There's no way...Crap! That means I actually have to race since there's no way I'll ever place good again." Chris passed Jennifer with a little over a half mile left in the ride.

We came into transition about a minute apart. Jennifer was still in 3rd and Chris was in 4th. The run seemed like a nice relaxing course, but quickly turned into a brutal maze on the golf course. Chris managed to pass one person, but he didn't know where he stood. The last mile was a fight to the finish. Chris ended up finishing 15 seconds behind the 2nd place man and Jennifer managed to keep her podium spot. Chris would have gotten 2nd overall if he hadn't biked that extra half mile. Chris once again collapsed at the finish and ended up in the med tent. After laying on the ground for ten minutes near the finish, the EMT's finally came and asked if he was okay. Fortunately, he made a pretty quick recovery. It was just a hot race.

The Mabey triathlete clan ended up doing pretty well for themselves.

Two third place overall finishes and a first and second place in age group. Not bad.

Being eaten alive in beautiful scenery

No we weren't actually being eaten, we were just viciously attacked by mosquitoes. Last week we decided to use some of our great new gear we got for our wedding. We headed up into the Uinta Mountains for a little backpacking. The mountains were green and beautiful, and it seemed as though the trip would be full of backpacking bliss. All of that changed when we started getting by some lakes and swarms of mosquitoes formed around our bodies.   Jennifer put on her jacket and hood to try and keep them at bay, but it was to no avail. Both of us ended up with 20 plus bites, and that was with using bug spray. Maybe we should've picked up that 100% deet spray at REI?

The trip was gorgeous and because we went on Thursday we only saw four other people on the hike in and had the entire lake to ourselves.

Chris got up early Friday morning to take some pictures and it was too cold for the bugs to be up then so he was actually able to be at peace with the surroundings for a while.

Bon Iver: Music at its Finest

It's official, we can now check one thing off our summer list. We went to Red Butte Gardens for the Bon Iver show. Red Butte is a very relaxed venue; it was fantastic for Bon Iver. The bass was reverberating off the amphitheater walls and the wind made the trees dance as our friend Aaron said.

Picture Courtesy of Salt Lake Magazine

From the start the set was amazing. With harmonies that would impress anyone, Bon Iver put on an amazing show. Justin Vernon was quite articulate at the mic, at least until he started singing. Chris thinks that the show sets a record for the number of guitars used. By the end of the second song there were already ten guitar exchanges. Probably the best concert Chris has ever been to. Jennifer was equally impressed. Bon Iver is an outstanding bunch of musicians.

We continued our last summer tradition of ending our concert experience by eating Jennifer's favorite food in Salt Lake City: street tacos. We washed that down with 7/11 Super Big Gulp sized Blue Powerade and berry Sour Patch Kids. By the way, berry Sour Patch Kids are not as good as the originals.