Weekly Newsletter: June 24th-30th, 2024
- Written by Keith Huster
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- 6 min read
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- Last updated 2 months ago
It's that time of the year to embrace 100°F (37.8°C) temperatures in Utah. 🥵 To start acclimating, we spent the weekend hiking and mountain biking along the Wasatch Mountains.
Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝
Lindsey Huster
Our latest blog post
Lindsey's reading goal update 📖 👩
Lindsey has been super busy over the past few weeks with traveling for multiple vacations and spending time with friends and family. Still, Lindsey has found time to read an additional 5 books since her last update. This brings her total for the year to 23 books read!
The Magic of Sea Glass
After the loss of her fiancé a year ago, event planner Lauren Sutton can’t seem to go on with her choice of career or the life she’d built with her fiancé any longer. Floundering emotionally, she makes a snap decision to sell her half of the business and spend the summer among the sand dunes and changing tides of the Outer Banks, taking care of an old inn in Rodanthe, North Carolina with its elderly owner Mary Everett.
Lindsey is looking forward to reading even more books as her daily life returns to normal for the next couple of months.
Hiking to the Draper Suspension Bridge 🥾 🌉
Utah's getting very hot, but we can't let the heat stop us from enjoying the outdoors. 🥵 On Saturday, we headed to Draper, UT to hike the Orson Smith Park to Draper Suspension Bridge Loop.
This 2.3-mile (3.7-kilometer) loop trail meanders up the Draper bench towards the Bear Canyon Suspension Bridge. It was an incredibly hot hike but thankfully there was a breeze for the majority of the afternoon. It felt great for both of us to get out and hike around. We don't hike as much as we used to when we first moved to Utah.
Gallery of our hike along the Orson Smith Park to Draper Suspension Bridge Loop.
Keith used this hike to test out how his knee physical therapy is progressing. He hasn't hiked up or down a significant slope since starting physical therapy a few months ago. Thankfully, Keith didn't experience any issues while hiking! 😀Lindsey decided to challenge herself by hiking with a loaded backpack. She has a potential long-distance hiking goal coming up this fall that she has started training for. 😅
Mountain biking at Round Valley 🚵♂️ 🚵♀️
On Sunday, it was time to break out the mountain bikes! We packed up the Jeep and headed to Park City, UT to ride the Round Valley singletrack. Round Valley is known for having an excellent mix of beginner and intermediate MTB trails. This was perfect for us since Lindsey hasn't ridden any MTB trails yet this year and Keith is still progressing through his physical therapy program which limits how hard he can go on the bike.
Keith chose the All Round 'Round Round Valley loop to help keep us focused on the easier trails for this ride. Don't let that fool you though, even the beginner-level trails in Utah can be quite challenging, both physically and technically. Lindsey completed one lap of the loop while Keith decided to tackle a second lap before calling it a day. This was the perfect intro back into mountain biking for both of us.
Gallery of our MTB ride throughout the All Round 'Round Round Valley loop
After we had our fill of singletrack, we drove into Park City to have lunch at the Windy Ridge Cafe. The cafe has a beautiful outdoor patio and serves a delicious selection of standard American fare. Lindsey had the burger and Keith had a Cuban sandwich. Both meals were extremely satisfying after a hard day of mountain biking.
Gallery of our post-MTB meal at Windy Ridge Cafe in Park City, UT
On the drive home, we saw two surprising sights. First, we saw an older model Corvette pulling what looked to be a motorcycle trailer. 🤔 Then, as we passed by the Heber Valley Airport, we noticed a massive helicopter! I mean, this thing was HUGE! It's not uncommon to see large private jets at this airport but a personal helicopter of this size is definitely a rare sighting.
Gallery of surprising sights during our drive home through Heber City, UT
2024 Tour Divide - A record-breaking year! 🚵 🏆
The 2024 Tour Divide was one for the record books! The racers faced incredibly cold, brutal winter conditions at the start of the race in Canada as well as blistering hot temperatures throughout New Mexico.
Even so, the elite-level racers pushed through to set a new official Tour Divide race record, besting Mike Hall's record which has stood since 2016. If you would like to know more about the race, please check out the Bikepacking.com articles below.
- Justinas Leveika wins 2024 Tour Divide, setting new record time!
- Meaghan Hackinen is first woman to finish 2024 Tour Divide
Upcoming posts and videos 👷 👷♀️️
Lindsey has wrapped up the series of posts on Yi's visit to Utah. We 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 will also be putting together a full blog post about our trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama as well as Lindsey's most recent trip to Redfish Lake in Idaho.
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.👇 💬