Panguitch, UT

As promised, the real blog post =D

Believe it or not, the tiny town of Panguitch, UT is actually a cool place. Well, technincally it's surrounded by cool places. Namely Bryce Canyon and Panguitch Lake. Vinnie and I figured we should take a trip somewhere before he started his new job, so I took Friday off and we drove down. The rest of our gang joined us on Saturday afternoon. It was awesome.

It was gorgeous all weekend, thankfully. It takes about four hours to get to Panguitch from SLC, so I entertained myself by taking pictures out of the windows and sunroof.

The traditional passenger-seat self portrait...gotta love the glasses!

The first night it was just me and Vinnie, and there isn't a ton to do in Panguitch itself (surprise, surprise), so we headed up to the lake to have a look around. There's a cabin/RV resort being built on the south side of the lake, and we stopped there and hung out for a little while. That's where we found out that we could rent a boat, which we did the next day. This is Vinnie looking out over the lake on Friday night:

We also made friends with the resort's mascot Wilson, who was named after the tennis ball because he loved to fetch.

He followed us around for an hour and a half with a block of wood. He'd set it at our feet and just stare at it until we would throw it for him. He was awesome.

On Saturday morning we went for a hike through Bryce Canyon. Bryce Canyon is one of my favorite places in Utah. I think that probably has something to do with the fact that we would stop there on our way to Lake Powell when I was a kid. This was the first time I'd actually gone on a hike through it though. We took the Rim Trail, which wraps around the outside of the canyon. The views were incredible!

There was hardly a cloud in the sky, and the sunlight was intense, so unfortunately my camera didn't pick up on the stunning colors very well. I'll have to see if Photoshop can fix that for me...
Later that afternoon we returned to the lake. We rented a party barge, which Vinnie was all too willing to captain:
Elson bought an inflatable raft a few weeks (months?) ago, and hadn't used it yet. So we inflated it on the boat and Leard took it on its maiden voyage:
Every now and then I take a picture that I love, and that makes me realize why I love taking pictures. This is one of them:I don't know why they are laughing, but the expressions on their faces are priceless. This another one that is awesome: This is on our way to dinner on Saturday night.

All in all it was an excellent trip to Panguitch. We'll definitely be doing it again...right after we go to Moab again ;-)