Our short trip to Salt Lake City

Tuesday, September 02, 2008 tnguyen308 1 Comments

We decided to go out of town for Labor Day weekend. Since we had credits left from Delta, we decided why not Salt Lake City. We were not disappointed. It is a beautiful city where we'd like to visit again in the winter.

We arrived on Saturday, quickly checked into our beautiful hotel and drove to Thanksgiving Point Village. We checked out the dinosaur museum as well as watched a 3D movie about them. Very interesting. Then we drove to Park City, were the 2002 Winter Olympics were held. It was a cute little town. We were a bit late to ride the ski lift up but glad we took the short drive out there, it was beautiful.

On Sunday, we woke up pretty early to go to mass at The Cathedral of the Madeline. It's a gorgeous Gothic style church, with hand-painted windows and high vaulted ceilings. We then made our way down to Snowbird Ski and Summer resort to go for horseback riding. Unfortunately, when we checked in, we were told we could not go because it rained on the trails the night before and it could be dangerous, if the horses slip on the mud. We opted to do the ATV guide instead, supposedly safer. We took a short tram ride up to the top of the mountains. It was about 70 degrees before departing, however, getting to the top it was 45 degrees. Wowsers, was it cold. We were not prepared at all. Thank goodness the guide let me borrow his jacket and gloves or else I would've freezed my buns off. I was a bit nervous at first, I wasn't comfortable driving such a machine. I couldn't wrap my hands around the brakes and I didn't feel strong enough to turn the sharp corners going down the mountain. But after a bit, I got the hang of it and it wasn't that bad. We had some specatular views of the mountains and the city of Alta. We were told you could ski from Snowbird, through Alta and into Park City in one day. Crazy! We our tour ended, we headed back down to the festival, Okterberfest. There were all sorts of people and beer to be had at every section of the park. We got some goodies and munchies, although I was not a fan of the bratwurst. When we were finished, we decided to head back into town, pick up some food and head to Antelope Island to swim in the bay, which happens to be the Great Salt Lake.

Recommended to us by my cousin, we stop into Little World Chinese Restaurant for some steamed sea bass and fried dumplings. We were told this would be the best sea bass ever from a whole in the wall dump. We take it to-go and anxiously await eating it while on the island. On our way to the island, the weather starts to look grim. It's windy and grey and starts to sprinkle a bit. By the looks of the outside, you would think it would of been pouring, but it was just a slight drizzle. It wasn't until we were farther into town, that it started pouring. But we forged on, we drove this far already, we'll just drive around the island a bit. We finally get there and the ranger at the gate looks at us like we're crazy, but we go in anyways. It clears up a bit, but still not weather you would want to be outside in. We drive the 7 mile causeway to the island and look back and no one else is coming. Maybe we are crazy. Oh well, we veer left to check out the ranch. On the way to the ranch, we see a bison to our left. Wow, he/she is big. We keep going, and there's another on our right. Amazing. Now, we're just looking for herds of them. Haven't seen any yet. As we keep driving down this road, we keep seeing signs that the ranch is up ahead. It seems like we've driven many, many miles and still no sign of a ranch or building. As we decide that once we drive over a heel and don't see anything, we will turn around, lo-and-behold, it's the ranch. We were expecting something grand and spectacular, we drove all that way, but it's just a little ranch. Oh well, now we can say we saw the ranch on Antelope Island. As we drive back, we finally see a herd of bison. It's amazing to me to see wild animals roaming around, it's such a different feeling than seeing them in captivity in the zoo. They just seem happy. As we inch closer to where we started on the road, we see another bison, probably the same one we saw earlier, but this time it's 5 feet from our car. I rapidly start taking pictures and my hubby tells me he's taking a whiz. Nice, I just took pictures of a bison doing it's thing. At least it wasn't mating, man, he would not be happy if pictures were taken of that. :D We head to the visitors center to learn more about this awesome island. Then park at the peak of the beach to have our food. Boy, was it good. The fish was seasoned to perfection and had a wonderful texture. We wished we had more.

We finally make it home on Monday, with a hour and a half delay from storms in Utah and turbulance in Houston. It's nice to take mini-vacations and learn about little towns in our great country. I wish we could do it more often, but the times we do, I treasure.

Enjoy some of the pictures we took.