Hot and cold in the desert

Hello Everyone,

Yesterday, I was walking around the town of Ketchum (whose motto is, shockingly, not "Ketchum All"), and I had a similar feeling to walking through a grocery store in the middle of a weekday. "What are you all doing here?"

In the grocery store example, I know that I'm there because I'm unemployed and traveling. That can't be the case for everyone else. In Ketchum, which is a decent sized tourist town, I'm there for the biking. I'm sure that's true for some others, but not everyone.

It's not that Ketchum isn't nice, it's a lovely little town, it's that the surrounding area isn't as majestic as other tourist towns I've been to, and we're not that close to a major population center.

Part of my confusion probably stems from the fact that other people tolerate heat better than I do. It's very hot here, and there are few trees. Ironically, being a desert, it's also cold at night. This morning, Arthur and I hit the trails early, and I had to wear a jacket for the first time in months. By the time the sun crests the hills to the east though, it's pretty high in the sky and hits like a blast from a furnace. By that point this morning, we had climbed out of a valley with trees to a hill with none and went from chilled to sweating pretty much instantly.

Like a lot of things on this trip, I'm enjoying the new experience. This is not a place I'd ever pictured myself going, so it's fun to find myself here. It is, as they say, a trip.

Wes

Photos

Here's a series I took this morning. They are all from the same trail.