Megerle Visit

Our good friends from Austin - Jeff and Rushell Megerle were in town for a wedding and we were lucky enough to be able to spend a FULL day with them! We started off the day by hitting up the farmers market in Salt Lake. Today was the last day of the market for the rest of the year. It was quite an interesting experience - lots of food to choose from and some "hippies" singing or playing music. The "hippies" and "bums" hanging out at Pioneer park didn't seem to phase the Megerle's...it just reminded them of the "keep Austin weird" type people back home.

Next on the agenda - it was a perfectly beautiful Saturday afternoon and the Fall colors were in bloom. We decided to head up the American Fork Canyon for a drive and stop in on Sundance. We have made this drive several times in the past....normally only once or twice a year. Apparently this year we made a completely WRONG TURN. The GPS on Jen's iPhone looked like this:

What is the first thing you notice? The "no service" status in the upper left corner. The red dots are where Sundance was...where we were suppose to be headed. The blue dot on the far right of the screen is where we were...not on the yellow "highway"...just a "white road" on the GPS map. Well this "white road" did connect up with Provo Canyon on the GPS map so we thought we would just follow it instead of back tracking. Good thing we took the 4 runner. The road went off-roading crazy on us. The guys LOVED it...the girls looked like this:

Probably about an hour later after several rocky dirt roads, crossing two rivers/creeks and finally getting STUCK on an up hill incline with the 4 runner on three wheels with no clear end in sight (the main highway) - the woman called it quits. One pregnant lady with a full bladder and one car sick lady were TIRED of being bounced, jerked and almost killed (in our minds....). The boys made a 3 point turn on that nasty incline at a switchback and we re-tracked our hour drive in about 10 minutes. Some of the "fun" pictures we snapped:

We ended up getting on the more paved road heading to Heber....we were a bit worried when we saw this sign - but then saw a small SMARTCAR going the other direction and knew we could handle it!

This adventure gets better.....right now it is high season for hunting. So we were passing people left and right with bright orange gear and rifles strapped to their backs. Once we FINALLY made it to the major highway what did we have run across the road right in front of us??? A deer...yes a DEER! Of course there was no hunter with a rifle around anywhere....so the brakes went a slamming and the deer kept going and lived another day.

We blame this all on Jeff - before we left our house this afternoon he said wanted to test out the 4 runners new gear (the tires, lift kit, etc....the 4 runner didn't get upgraded until we left Austin)...we were jinxed from the start. Little did we know that we would actually test it all out and manage to destroy a CV boot that was already on its last leg...at least we hope it was the CV boot.....something did break and doesn't run quite right with the front right axle area.

Now back to civilization it was time to hit up Tucanos for dinner - the Megerle's had never experienced the Brazilian feast before.

Also - a proud Dustin of the mess he made of the 4runner:


We had an awesome day with the Megerle's - an unexpected adventure we all survived! We are sad to see them head back to Austin but am sure we will see again soon!