Salt Lake City 2008

We traveled to Salt Lake City to visit Karen's brother's family. They just had their fourth child, Holly. When we visited last year we stayed at their house. We decided it would be best to stay at a hotel this year because of the new born. It would be too crazy for Jerry and Marianne to have two more people in their house. It was a wise decision because three of the four children had colds or coughs and Karen came down with a cold on the flight out.

It was nice to see them again, the kids had grown. Last year Aaron was a toddler, this year he spent much of his time running full speed directly into the couch, bouncing off, turning around and then running full speed into a chair, bouncing off, etc...

Eric was doing well, he built a model boat for Boy Scouts and he took second in the boat race. Julieann was her usual fun self.

Jerry's oldest daughter drove down from Challis Idaho with her boyfriend, Gary. It was nice to see Amanda again, Karen tries to keep in touch as much as possible. This was the first time we met her boyfriend Gary and he seems to be a pretty decent guy. They drove Gary's Land Rover down from Idaho. He let me drive it back from Snowbird. Nice SUV but my Audi had more room, sorry Gary.

We stayed at the County Inns and Suited on 990 North 500 West. The AAA rate was $89 per night. The room was a suite, which was nice because Karen could not sleep so she moved to the couch in the middle of the night and she could shut the door between the bedroom and the living room area. The room and property were just ok, nothing wrong with them, but nothing about the property stood out. I guess $89 for a suite was not a bad price, but I guess I was spoiled the previous week when I stayed at Cambria suites in Boise for the same price. The hotel was brand new and the suite had LCD TVs . The Country Inn and suites was clean and everything worked in our room so I shouldn't complain.

Karen gave me a Garmin GPS for Christmas and it was indispensable. The roads in Salt Lake City are crazy, for example we stayed on 500 West which changed to 89 and Orchard (I think it was Orchard). Going to Jerry's house went something like this- go two blocks take a left, go two blocks take a right, go two blocks take a left and so on. The Garmin was flawless. I gave Karen a Spider ski jacket and ski pants for Christmas she was stylingl when we went to Snowbird.

We took the kids sledding on Friday morning. It snowed the previous night so the foot of fresh powder prevented us from reaching maximum downhill speed, it also made it much harder to get up the hill.





Later in the day we went snow shoeing at a little park on the edge of town. Luckily, someone had broken the trail through all of the fresh snow. The trail was a switchback up the side of the mountain and it was steep and narrow. The scenery was beautiful and we got a distant look at some very expensive homes on the other side of the valley.




We went skiing at Snowbird on Saturday. We stopped at Utah Ski and Golf in downtown Salt Lake to get our equipment and lift tickets. The drive to the mountians was slow. The road was backed up into Salt Lake with skiers heading up the canyon. Luckily it did not take long to arrive at Snowbird. It was a scramble to get us and all of our equipment on the shuttle bus for the ride to that chalet. We split up at the chalet. Amanda and Gary went to the bunny hill to try snowboarding for the first time. Jerry, Karen and I took the Peruvian lift to the top of the mountain and took the people mover through the mountain and spent our morning skiing on the back side of Snowbird. Growing up in Minnesota I did not get a chance to ski deep powder, Snowbird got dumped on on Friday and there was still plenty of untracked snow to ski on. Unfortunately, skiing knee deep powder is hard and we did were not at our best because of the powder. We still had a great time. We met Gary and Amanda for lunch, they were discouraged at first but were getting the hang of snowboarding by lunch time. We decided to stay on the front side of the mountain in the afternoon. We skied hard the rest of the day and headed back to the Peruvian lift to take one last run. Kaern and I would have been happy to call it quits, but I think Jerry was looking forward to the last run. We got to the Peruvian lift at 4:05 pm but it closed at 4:00 pm. Jerry wanted to hike down the canyon a short ways to catch another chairlift but Karen and I talked him out of it. It seem like people get hurt on that last run of the day.



Jerry went home and we went back to the hotel to soak in the whirlpool. Gary and I went to the liquor store so I could get beer and he could get a bottle of Jim Beam. It was the strangest liquor store I had ever been in. They had all sorts of booze but no cold beer, so I had to go to the local gas station to buy a six pack. Not much to choose from, I ended up with Blue Moon, but I was hoping for Stella or Fat Tire.

As usual we were wiped after a day of skiing followed by a quick beer and relaxing in the hot tub. We met Jerry for dinner and went back to the room to crash.

We stopped at Jerry's house the next day on the way to the airport. Our flight home was packed but on time.