Theresa and I had so much fun on our girl's weekend last October that we decided to go on a week-long trip! Ok, that's only partially true - we actually booked this trip last July. But we got even more excited about it once we had such a great time in Fredericksburg! :)
We decided to do a Sunday-Saturday trip so that we still had a partial weekend with our families on both ends. Plus having a Sunday to recover from vacation is my new favorite way to vacation! But since I was leaving early on a Sunday morning, I ended up taking a taxi to the airport for the first time in... well... forever maybe? I've had a town car pick me up when traveling for work once or twice, but really this is the first time I've called a cab. "Called" - there's an app for that! ;)
We both could have sworn that we planned our flights to meet at the same time, but somehow my flight actually had me arriving 2 hours earlier than Theresa. She was all concerned about me having to wait, but once I googled the airport and discovered they had free wi-fi and a Starbucks outside of the "secure" area, I was golden! It gave me time to update my very, very behind blog!
But wait, where is this awesome trip??
Drumroll please...
Park City, Utah! We went over a ton of different combinations of where to travel and ended up picking a ski vacation! I had only been to Park City in the summer for a field trip and she had driven by once on a snowmobile trip from a different Utah resort, so we were both pretty excited to stay there for a skiing trip. We looked up the trail maps to make sure we had enough greens to start with and were amazed at how large the mountain was. We could ski a different trail every time and still not cover the whole place!
We skied the first two days and I'll get back to the skiing shortly, but we didn't brave taking the fancy cameras up the slopes those two days. But we planned the trip with a day off in the middle to go walk around the Park City Main Street and take photos. There is a lift that actually leaves from town and you can ski straight into town over this snow covered bridge. We decided to check it out to see if we could ski down the next day for lunch!
And as you can probably tell, it was super bright & sunny. Great for lens flare, but not so great for the heat. I was dying! I was not planning on it being in the mid-50's all week!
We had actually walked down to town the night before for dinner and had checked out the town lift. We didn't get quite this close to it, we just wanted to see how it worked to ride it down in case we didn't feel up to skiing down. Later that night, I realized there was an app for our ski passes that you could download and see how much you had skied - and it showed us as having ridden the town lift! What?
They manually scan your card when you get on the lifts at the base of the resort, but there is also a RF reader that gets you when you ski under it. Turns out the range on those readers is further than you think (it's the black box labeled epic MIX in the photo above). Luckily we figured this out before we accidentally took our passes into town on our day off - it would have registered the town lift and we would have lost a day of skiing!
Back to walking around the town! My favorite thing we found on our walk was this super cool pipe painted to look like a snake. I'm assuming it's functional because it's a bit hidden down an alley. I just thought it looked awesome!
Utah is a very weird state with alcohol and to buy any wine we had to go to the state liquor stores. I already knew this, so that wasn't a surprise, but this awesome display outside the store was by far the best "don't drink" display I've ever seen. In case you can't read the fine print it says "Alcohol impairs good judgement and decision making" - though the store is far enough from the ski slopes as to wonder how this skier could have made it this far... ;)
Had to stop for lunch, but still playing with our cameras. Theresa bought me some "do-hickeys" (as she calls them) for my birthday that you strap in front of the lens and it makes shapes with the lights in the background of photos. We got it to work with the few lights in the restaurant, but they weren't the best photos. Will have to play with them more later!
So hard to get one of us in front of the camera these days. It certainly helps when we both have ours! Though we end up with looks that usually read "You're not taking my photo are you??"
I was! Because I want more photos of my bestie! And also because the chalkboard sign behind her was so colorful! :)
I had to get her to take a touristy photo of me and Franz the bear to show the boys. He looks like such a friendly bear! Look, he has his arm around me *and* a butterfly landed on his arm! Awwww...
I may or may not have bought a coloring book and colored pencils because I really felt like coloring one afternoon! I even contemplated bringing my book from home and decided I would need the downtime in the airport to work on this blog. Instead, I finished it all and ended up buying a coloring book. I have no idea what happened. Wait - I just admitted I bought it. Oh well, confession is good for the soul!
And finally, we made it to the slopes with the camera! We decided to hit the easy practice green to see how it would go skiing with a pack.
I say skiing, but one of us was skiing and one of us was snowboarding. Neither of us would budge on our preferred method, so we just were a mis-matched pair. Our initial plan was to spend the first two days getting comfortable, then take turns getting photos of each other the next two days.
Except we decided that maybe Theresa should not be snowboarding with camera gear... Ha! In her defense, she hasn't been on the slopes in 3+ years and I have already taken lessons this season. So I was slightly ahead on staying upright...!
She did offer to take photos of me by hanging out on the run until I had a chance to ride the lift back up again. It is the shortest possible run and lift, so I took her up on it. I figured it might be the only spot that would lend itself to getting photos of me "in action"!
Except in action shots really don't look *that* amazing unless you are crouched down and kicking up lots of snow. You can see I managed to kick up a little bit of snow, but it's not *that* impressive. Oh well, I tried!
I ended up using the snowplow method a lot more on this slope than I ever do. I was going so slow that it was just as easy as making a turn. Makes me look a lot less hardcore though. Sigh...
Oh and I should probably say thanks to Brittney for loaning us her camera bag - it was a champ on the slopes! And thanks to Matt for the helmet and goggles. I appreciate that you want to keep my brain intact (and your goggles are cooler than mine)! :)
Theresa ready to go, but I'm still taking photos! I thought I should get a photo of the lift we spent the most time using. Appropriately named First Time - ha! :)
Also we learned that each of us had certain advantages and disadvantages. My biggest advantage was that I came off the lift ready to go while she had to sit down and buckle in her back foot before we could take off. So there was a little bit of waiting for Theresa time I could take selfies or send text messages.
They had several of these little monsters scattered around the slopes. We thought they were too cute! They even had miniature versions of them in the gift shop and we fell in love with one that was a female skier and snowboarder riding a lift - just like us! At least we were in love until we saw the price. Everything in Park City is pricey, but they were just ridiculous!
On to our favorite run - Claim Jumper! Theresa has a habit of holding her right hand out when she's focusing on her turns. I have been teasing her all week she looks like she is holding a cup of coffee while boarding. I'm 99% sure she did it on purpose for this photo, but trust me that she did it without noticing it the rest of the time!
Remnants of the old tram system used for mining. This one was King Con Ore Bin - I thought it was neat to be skiing along and suddenly run into some old buildings. I'm glad they left bits and pieces of history on the slopes!
Theresa waiting on me to finish taking photos. It was pretty hot outside, so laying in the snow actually felt really nice! Also, it is way easier to take a quick break to sit down in a snowboard than in skis. I can't ever get my legs to not be at an awkward angle while still strapped in.
Our goal for the day was to ski down to town. It would require some blues, but we felt ready for it. We made it down the green part, then had a fork in the road with three blues. A guy on the lift who had told us that "most of the blues were really greens" had asked the park helpers which trail had been groomed the night before because he thought that would be the easiest. There was a small handwritten sign at the fork that said the easiest way was a different trail. We were torn on which way to go, but ended up going the way Walter had suggested.
It was awful! In good conditions, we might have been able to make it, but it was low on the mountain in the blazing sun and the snow had turned to slush. It felt like trying to ski in a snowcone! We both were falling all over the place. I made a few turns before biting it - which hurts a bit more in icy snow after you have decided to ditch your coat and gloves due to the heat. I pretty much lost faith in my ability to get down gracefully and tried a combination of sliding, side-stepping and attempting turns to make it down. This is where the snowboard really shines - she just slid/snowplowed down like it was no big deal. She ended up waiting on me for the first time and it was a *long* wait...
And I know the slope looks totally lame here. It was kinda lame, but it was steeper at the top. Either way, it sucked and totally killed both of our confidence levels.
Just chilling, waiting on her ski buddy. We actually ended up making a friend who struggled on the sister side of our run - the side with moguls. He actually gave up and took his skis off. I didn't get to see it, but Theresa said he did an awesome job of holding them and sliding down on his butt. He made us feel a little better about our performance since he told us about his yearly ski trips he takes. We all hung out at this junction for awhile trying to recover from all the excitement. And figure out the easiest path through the slush to get the rest of the way to town.
Finally made it! I managed to make it down and get the camera out in enough time to get a shot of Theresa coming across the bridge. At least we looked like we knew what we were doing for this stretch - right next to everyone sitting outside eating their lunch. Though I wouldn't have blamed them for being entertained if they saw us falling up higher. That was one of our favoritie activities at the Miner's Camp lodge on the slopes. We weren't the only ones struggling this week!
After lunch, we got to ride the lift back up from town. It is by far the oldest lift in the resort and I only risked pulling out my phone to get a photo. You can see I still haven't put my jacket back on - it was just too hot for me! Of course, I ended up with a pretty nice sunburn this week. I had on spf 100 today, but it didn't seem to be enough to save my poor nose...
We had grand plans of all the runs we were going to attempt on Friday, but once we went up and went down our old favorites, we decided maybe it was going to be a shorter day. The slushy snow was working it's way up the mountain and even the upper runs were getting pretty chewed up earlier in the day. As an added "benefit", it was Friday and the slopes were packed with so many people! We did manage to get a few runs in and I got some more photos of the mining operations.
And I was still skiing in minimal clothing today, but decided to re-don the goggles and buff to protect my poor face. I think it mostly worked - my nose doesn't appear to be too much more like Rudolph than it was last night!
Overall, we had a blast even with the less than perfect snow conditions. We may have disappointed our husbands that were trying to live by proxy by not straying off the "easier" runs but we had fun! In the end, it was mostly about hanging out with my bestie and the skiing was just an added bonus! Can't wait to start planning our next adventure - though I may vote for somewhere warm if I'm going to end up sunburned either way! :)