Escape from Hurricane Irene

As you might have heard, last week / weekend New York was going all kinds of crazy in the weather department. First we had an Earthquake and then a Hurricane (eventually turned Tropical Storm) attacked!

I felt the 5.8 magnitude Earthquake (my first, despite being from Northern CA) which was scary and kinda cool all at once. Cool in the sense that nobody was hurt and it made for a great story of the day. Scary in the sense that the building I was in shook immensely and the 6 windows surround me showing construction works clinging to their scaffolding for dear life and people running out of buildings as fast as possible, which made me realize something serious had happened (it was so random and weird I thought it had been in my head at first).

Then a few days later I evacuated my work family who were in Zone A of high risk flood warnings and mandatory evacuation orders, and proceeded to evacuate myself (by sheer pre-planned luck) to the West Coast where it was beautiful and sunny and you'd never know a mean lady-storm like Irene even existed (and thankfully spared NY in comparison with the massive damage done to surrounding areas).

Instead, Tom and I were in UT for a long, leisurely weekend with friends and [his] family. Tom's family is silly and adventurous and I love 'em! We went with his parents (who's idea it was in the first place), brother Tyler and sister Jae (two of his five older sibs).

First we panned for gold at American Fork Canyon! 

 And found some! Tom actually found five flakes.

American Fork Canyon is beautiful. I had never been to the canyon and am not very familiar with Utah, so after we panned for an hour Tom and I drove up and over the mountain to Provo just to take in the scenery. It was beautiful!

Being from CA you'd think I would know a thing or two about gold panning, but again this is something I had never tried or even learned much about. I'm beginning to think I missed out on a lot of important homegrown opportunities the Golden State offers. Am I allowed to even claim I'm from there if I've never been in an Earthquake, don't surf or snowboard (though I did skateboard quite well), and never tied gold panning??!! I hope so...

The weekend continued seeing friends I grew up with (including mt longtime friend Julia from Montreal I hadn't seen in 10yrs!) changing tennants at Tom's condo in Provo and a lovely family dinner at Tom's parents with almost all the siblings (we missed his brother Tim and sister in law Amy who live in AZ) and nieces / nephews. 

It was so relaxing and chill and, even though we bailed on the storms back in NYC, every night we were greeted with beautiful thunderstorms and light rain! I LOVE thunderstorms. I even caught a shot of the lightening from out the windshield on our way home one night. It was even more amazing in person, lighting up the whole sky every three minutes or so! Trip to UT = Success!