When we woke up this morning it was raining so we both went back to sleep for a while, something we rarely do. I have to say it was kind of nice and when we woke up again, the sun was coming out, so it was perfect timing. We had hoped to ride the bike and explore the area but with thunderstorms in the forecast, we wisely chose to take the car.

Our route took us through Logan, home of Utah State University and a city with a population of roughly 48,000. Until now, my knowledge of Utah was limited to the fact that it has a large Morman population and it hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics. I learned today that it is also a gorgeous state with friendly people and pretty lakes, rivers, mountains and valleys.

We drove north on Hwy 89 to Bear Lake which is located in the north west corner of the state and it lies half in Utah and half in Idaho. The terrain was incredible, with rock faces galore looking somewhat like sculptures. With the fall colours of yellow, orange and muted red contrasting with the rock faces and desert-like hills, we were treated to some fabulous art painted by Mother Nature herself.

Bear Lake is huge; 20 miles long and 8 miles wide, with a turquoise hue caused by limestone particles suspended in the water. The lake is popular for fishing, boating and waterskiing while the surrounding area offers activities from horseback riding to golfing and hiking to ATVing. We drove around the lake, through Idaho (again) and looped through the surrounding hills (mountains?) back to Garland. Because of the turbulent weather, though we encountered no nasty weather ourselves, we could see it raging all around us. It was actually pretty spectacular and in fact that word would sum up our whole first day in Utah!