Salamander Flats Trail

So to prepare for King's Peak (which we are doing at the end of this month) I decided we should be doing some other hikes around Utah to really remind us how it feels to hike and sweat and really push ourselves. We started that this weekend by going to Salamander Flats Trail. If you've never heard of Salamander Trail it's for a reason. You see, I did the planning for this ALL last minute, sort of. Originally I wanted to do Mt. Timpanogos trail as it was a bit more strenuous and longer and the elevation climb was bigger than what we should expect for King's Peak so I thought it would be perfect (according to this trails in Utah book we just got). The problem was because I planned it sort of last minute we still had laundry, grocery shopping, some cleaning, and dinner to cook so I felt we didn't have time to do Mt. Timp (online it said it could take up to 10 hours to complete and we only had a few hours). So when I went searching for other trails there was this one listed that said it only took 1.5 to 2.5 hours to complete. Well that sounded just perfect so we drove up, parked, and went searching for the trail, which had two directions, one was .5 miles and the other 1.5 miles. We started with the .5 and ended up no where so we turned around and went the 1.5 miles where we eventually came to some water but when we passed that we ended up at a parking section. There was really nothing to this hike, but at least it was a good starter one. It helped us see what we'll need to get before King's Peak (even though it was pretty easy, I definitely need better hiking shoes). All in all it was still a fun hike and we got to see some really pretty views (and Larry got the funniest dirt line on his legs even though he was wearing pants), but I'd probably recommend doing a different one if you're looking for a good hike. Looks like I'll be doing more research this week for our next hike.