The 1,000,000,000 Dollar Birthday

This may come to surprise to you all, but we're not rich. Maybe it's the fact that there is a 13 year old mini-van in the driveway, maybe it's the furniture in our bedroom given to me on my 13th birthday (almost antique you might say!), or maybe it's fact that in the past four years the farthest our family has vacationed was two hours north (no San Diego zoo, it's was the city zoo in Logan, UT. They have ducks. And a turtle.) Any of those might make it obvious that we're all about fish sticks instead of caviar. But even on our limited budget, I managed to give the Canuck a pretty amazing birthday gift. I gave him blue sky, sunshine, and a frozen waterfall. Anyone living in Salt Lake City will understand the pure joy that comes from seeing the sun. And not through a blanket of dense, gray, more-of-a-solid-and-less-of-a-gas, sky. (Heavy music starts to play) It's inversion season. The ground is gray, the sky is gray, and supposedly there are mountains surrounding the valley but with visibility limited to about 9 feet in front of you, those mountains could possibly be a myth. Breathing the inversion air is like breathing anesthetic gas. It messes with your mind and basically makes you want to sleep, all. the. time... No one can really have a happy birthday if they are suffering from the gray funk. Which is why I had to get him some blue sky and sunshine. We packed up our snowshoe gear and headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon. I'm not sure how roads are made in canyons, but this one has an area known by all as "The S Curve." Which is really more like a squash letter Z with an elevation climb, but whatever. I'm telling you all this because it's at the S curve where the inversion gets stuck- no longer able to make the climb up the canyon and spoil the air up there. You want some crazy reality TV? Film a couple driving up the canyon, a couple who has been living in the valley for the past week and forgot which way East and West are from not being able to see, and watch what happens when they pass the squashed Z curve up the canyon.

"WOO HOO! THAT RIGHT THERE! THAT IS BLUE SKY! BLUE SKY BLUE SKY THAT RIGHT THERE IS BLUE SKY!" It's another kind of drug, but instead of wanting to sleep we wanted to whoop whoop! Shortly after the blue sky high celebration, we stopped at the pull out for Doughnut Falls. Have you been there in the summer? Now you need to go in the winter. (Only girls- the vault potties at the trail head are closed for winter so go before you go unless you want to freeze your- oh never mind.) The hike ends in a little box canyon with a water fall at the top- a water fall that comes through a circle into a cave. A "doughnut" hole. Get it?? In the summer you can see the falls from below, but in the winter a climb to the top is required. If you don't have your snowshoes with good crampons (scary metal teeth gripers on the bottom which look like a chain saw blade, but are really your best friend), never mind.

Without the snowshoes, it could be a bit slicky and I don't want anyone to meet the business end of boulder. OR go BUY some snowshoes with good crampons- totally worth it. Go. Today. Inside the cave, the waterfall has frozen for the winter.

There is water flowing under the ice which sounds completely amazing live, but recorded it just sounds like a washing machine filling with water. Which is not a pleasant sound when your washing machine filled with so much water one time that your basement became a rainforest. I digress. It's not quite as easy to walk across the cave in the summer- what with the flowing water and gigantic washing machine splashing on you, oh and it's a couple feet deep and the water is about 50 degrees but in the winter? The ice is solid enough for a Canuck in snow shoes to wander about and take some amazing photos.

Bottom line- as far as birthday gifts go, this is in the top three- right behind the curling lessons oh and that one time I gave him a daughter 3 days before his birthday.