Weekly Newsletter: July 29th - August 4th, 2024

This week, we officially booked a trip to Portugal! 🇵🇹 Keith also met up with his friends to ride the famous Wasatch Crest mountain biking trail. Oh, and we enjoyed a delicious steak dinner and a surprise sweet treat!

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Family Vacation to Orange Beach, Alabama: Part 2

Family vacation in Alabama to celebrate my mom’s 70th birthday! Part 2 of 2

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

A sweet treat at Cherry Hill Farms 🍒 🍑

Lindsey has been wanting to check out the Burgess Orchards fruit stand at Cherry Hill Farms. So, we made the short drive up to Alpine, UT to see this local farm attraction. The fruit stand wasn't much more than that, a simple fruit stand. At this point in the year, they were selling off the remainder of their peach crop. The peaches looked delicious but we didn't buy any.

We did, however, partake in their dessert offerings. Lindsey ordered a Cherry Pie Sundae and Keith ordered the Peach Sundae. Both of these desserts were made with soft-serve ice cream and delicious, fresh fruit. This was a great way to get a break from the incredibly hot (100°F / 37.8°C) temperatures.

Date night steak dinner 🥩 😋

Speaking of food, it's been a little while since we had a good steak dinner. We were both craving a hearty meal so we decided to visit the Ruby River Steakhouse in Provo, UT. This steakhouse has a very old-school, old-west vibe and dishes up some great quality meat.

Keith ordered the Peppered Bacon Sirloin and Lindsey ordered the Steak Oscar. We both ordered the famous "Jacketed Baked Potato" and a Caesar Salad as our sides. You may be wondering, "What the heck is a "jacketed" baked potato?" Well, a "jacketed" baked potato is a potato that has first been baked and then deep-fried! This makes the inside of the potato super soft while crisping up the exterior skin similar to a french fry. Trust me, they are delicious! 😋

Flights to Portugal are booked! 🛫 🇵🇹

If you haven't yet heard, Lindsey has been planning a trip to walk the famous 170-mile (274-kilometer) Camino Portuguese Coastal route from Porto, Portugal 🇵🇹 to Santiago de Compostela, Spain 🇪🇸.

Initially, Lindsey had planned to walk this route on her own for two key reasons. First, due to Keith's prior knee injury, we were unsure if Keith would even be able to walk this route this year. Second, Lindsey wanted to experience taking a long, adventurous trip like this on her own. This would allow Lindsey to prove to herself that she can take on grand adventures such as this on her own and help her have the confidence to plan future trips.

However, Keith was able to recover in time for the walk and Lindsey decided that it would be more fun for us to experience this trip together. So, we found a way to work out our schedules so that we would have enough time to fully enjoy the route without feeling rushed. Once all of the scheduling issues were addressed, we shopped around online until we found a flight package that was within budget and then we quickly booked our flights. We are both so excited for this trip later this Fall and we can't wait to tell you all about it once we return.

First Wasatch Crest ride of the season 🚵 🤮

The smoke from the massive wildfires in California and Washington has been inundating Utah for the past couple of weeks. This has made it unsafe for Keith to go on too many long outdoor rides. The air quality is at its best early in the morning and late in the evening. So, Keith was thrilled when his friends planned for an early morning rip down the famous Wasatch Crest Trail this weekend.

The group typically self-shuttles this route by parking some vehicles at the bottom of the route and others at the top of trail near Guardsman Pass in Big Cottonwood Canyon. This week though, they decided to pay to have Big Rack Shuttle handle the task of shuttling the bikes to the top. The shuttle costs about $23 per rider but it saves a ton of time by not needing to run people back up to the top to retrieve vehicles.

There are several routes off the main Wasatch Crest Trail; Mill D to BCC, Millcreek Canyon, and Park City. The crew decided to ride the longest of the routes which takes riders from the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon to the bottom of Millcreek Canyon. This route descends nearly 6,000 feet (1,829 meters) over the course of approximately 25 miles (40.2 kilometers).

They couldn't have picked a better day to ride! An overnight rainstorm had hit the mountains which cleared the air of the smoke and also made for epic dirt conditions. The typical "dust on crust" was replaced with soft and grippy "hero dirt". 😎 The morning mountain views were spectacular, the dirt was amazing, nobody got hurt, and Keith set a new personal best on the Puke Hill climb! It really couldn't have been a better day of riding.

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

Lindsey has wrapped up the series of posts about our family trip Gulf Shores, Alabama. She is now working on posts from her most recent trip to Redfish Lake in Idaho. We also have several prior trips that we haven't yet shared so be sure to subscribe to our blog if you haven't done so already.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. Do you have any summer vacation plans? How do you like to enjoy the summer? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬