salt lake city and park city

as luck would have it, i have three friends living in park city, utah...two ladies i knew in high school, one of whom was a swim teammate, and a friend from garmisch...
katie picked me up at the airport, with two kids in tow...not her kids, kids she watches...katie works a number of different jobs, including swim coaching, and taking care of some of those kids...since i didn't think i'd ever been in utah previously, we drove through salt lake city so i could see a bit of it...in utah, it's a big city, but to me it felt like a regular town...(as i found out after the trip, the state of utah has only a couple million people)...katie and i were swim teammates in high school, i think we've only seen each other once or twice since then, and she's terrible about keeping in touch, so it was awesome to see her again...

lunch was at a random place, i had a salad...in addition to my massive sweet tooth, i love healthy food...how many people ever thought that would happen... :)
driving back to park city from salt lake city didn't take long...20 minutes? with so few people, and it being the middle of the day, there was no traffic...woo hoo...driving up to park city was beautiful...living in salt lake city or park city would be amazing...mountains all around, how could anyone not love it?
since katie is a swim coach, she takes care of some of the kids during summer days...the first place we went was the house of the two kids she had that day...a big house, beautiful views, two dogs...the biggest surprise to me, was the lack of tv...the parents made the decision that they didn't want their kids growing up with a lot of tv, so there isn't one in the house...when there is no tv, there is a lot more motivation to do something else...something active...

after being in the house for an hour or so the dad came home, so katie introduced me, then we left...hanging out at her flat, and coordinating dinner plans...
dinner was in another small town close to park city...we picked my friend christian along the way, i was super excited to see him again...there is a connection with garmischers that never goes away, even when you don't see each other for long periods of time...soooo good to catch up with him...one of katie's friends came along as well, scott...nice to meet him...
on the way home from dinner katie said she had $4 burning a hole in her pocket, so what did we do? go to a bar of course...hee hee...park city is a small town, mostly built around outdoor sports...the people who live there are really into those sports, and there isn't a lot of cultural stuff to do...for straight girls like me, there are lots of guys, the ratio is heavily in my favour:)

the next morning katie headed off to swim practice while i slept...how did i ever make it through all those morning practices when i swam competitively? she had two more kids with her when she came home after practice...the mom of one of those kids works at one of the ski resorts in the area, so it was possible to get discounted/free tickets to the chair lifts...even though there is no snow right now, being on top of the mountains was awesome...beautiful...
after coming back down, we headed into another area of town, close to main street...that day was 24 july, which is utah day, or something like that...basically the independence day of the state...at least, that's how i understood it...pioneer day...those who are not mormon sometimes call it pie and beer day...there are always special activities, parades, etc, happening on pioneer day...we took the girls and went to a luge/sled kind of thing...i don't know how to describe it properly...fun:)

the mom of one of the kids picked up both of the kids at the sledding thing, and we went home...a visit to coldstone creamery and the grocery store got us dinner...more salad...YAY!!
the next morning, katie again went to swim practice, i slept in again...hee hee...
before katie came back from practice, her sister nancye picked me up...nancye used to play soccer, and is still into the sport...the first thing we did was go back to her flat and watch the US team beat france in the olympics...soccer is one of those sports that takes foreva to find a champion, so they start the tournament before the official start of the olympic games...U-S-A  U-S-A...

since i still hadn't really seen salt lake city, we headed out so i could walk around a bit...after lunch, our first stop was the temple...if you know anything about utah, you've probably heard that it's full of mormons...the real name of the church is of jesus christ and the latter day saints...LDS for short...the head temple is in SLC, as are the administrative offices of the church...a giant complex...the LDS church is involved in business as well as religion...there is a mall in downtown salt lake city owned by the church, the entire mall is closed on sundays, even with stores like macy's...

if you aren't a member of the church, and in good standing, you don't get to go into the temple...in the visitors center (yes, the visitors center!) there is a model of the inside of the temple, so it's possible to get an idea of what you're missing...we were able to go in other buildings in the complex, though i'm not very sure what they were...worship spaces, but i don't know what made them different from the main temple..
after walking around the temple complex, the next stop was a tour of brigham young's house...he was one of the early leaders of the church, a former governor of the state...according to the sisters (females in the church are referred to as sisters) who showed us around the house, only one of brigham young's wives lived in the house...i'm not sure where the others lived...(in the early days of the church, polygamy was legal, and accepted, even encouraged)...
nancye has a part time job as a receptionist at a massage place, which entitles her to discount massages...we both signed up, and it felt amazing...i love a good massage:)

for dinner we went back up to park city...somehow we thought there would be an outdoor concert, but that didn't happen...christian and scott came again, so nancye got to see them...she'd only met scott once before, and didn't know christian at all...scott had prepped food for an outdoor concert, so he brought that...yay...i love group dinners, and i enjoy bringing different groups of my friends together...
nancye drove me to the airport at a ridiculously early hour the next morning...she lives super close to the airport (anyone in salt lake city, or even park city, lives close to the airport) and it's a small airport, so i didn't have to be there as early as i would normally like to be...