This is the second post covering the trip to Park City. You should read them in order. Here's a link to the first post of the trip; when you get to the end, click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left.
The confusion about the car museums in western Colorado has left a sizeable hole in our plans for this trip to Park City. We had just enough things planned to all but fill the days here, and the fact that the museum in Gateway is apparently not open this season, despite the info on the web, means we have a day to fill in a place that, let's face it, isn't really filled with things of great interest to two fat ol' retired lawyers.
Tomorrow is that day, so we're going to be kind of grasping at straws to find something to do. But that's tomorrow; meanwhile, yesterday and today have been pretty good.
First of all, we found a breakfast place that we like, one with light meals available, and drinkable coffee. We went there yesterday morning, & liked it well enough to go back this morning.
Yesterday we drove into Lehi, which is a suburb south of Salt Lake City. It features a number of interesting museums (and a well-regarded botanical garden, but we didn't see that). We started at the Museum of Natural Curiosity. It's a children's museum, but we went anyway, and to be honest, we really enjoyed it. Mainly because, that early, there weren't any kids there and we could play with all the stuff ourselves. Usually, there are kids swarming all over the exhibits, and it just seems too rude to elbow the little bas... uh, brats aside so we can see, for example, how an Archimedes screw works, or how air blows brightly coloured plastic balls through clear plastic tubes, or how a tornado feels. We spent at least a couple of hours there and had fun, although by the time we got to the last part of the museum, there were enough kids there to be In The Way. All in all, though, we timed it pretty close to perfectly.
After lunch at a fru-fru cafe in a building dedicated to new age stuff -- think expensive yoga classes and spa treatments -- we went to the Museum of Ancient Life. That is, dinosaurs. Oh, they had all kinds of stuff about Carboniferous forests and pre-Cambrian shellfish and stuff -- the boring stuff -- and there were, you know, things about ancient man hunting mastodons and all. But it was about dinosaurs. Four big exhibit halls, two about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs. A full Supersaurus skeleton (not actual fossilized bones, of course, but every bit as impressive), so big that it was impossible to get a photo of the whole thing. (It's actually hard to see one end from the other.) A brachiosaur skeleton looking down on you. A pair of T-Rex fighting over a dead Edmontosaur. Stegosaurs and allosaurs and ankylosaurs and mosasaurs and pleisiosaurs and all kinds of other 'saurs that I never heard of. I loved it.
 |
| shoe for scale |
We took the scenic route home over Guardsman Pass to cap off a really nice day; and we kind of stumbled on a pretty good place for dinner, after our first choice turned out not to be open. (bad Google Maps!)
This morning we were back at our preferred breakfast place, and after a stop at Walgreen's for some supplies, we sat out in the parking lot discussing what to do. See, today was going to be a day with a hole in the schedule, too, so I had thought about driving up to Flaming Gorge, just because it's pretty there and it would take all day. But when we got right down to it, I didn't want to do that. It would have felt kind of pathetic, driving all that way through counties I'd already been to just to pass the time. We might as well have stayed home and watched TV.
Then Curtis found a listing for a car museum in Salt Lake. (It's not listed on the web site I have bookmarked.) It seemed to have a pretty good collection, about a hundred cars (the only other car museums in Utah are the Toyota Land Cruiser Museum -- thanks, but no -- and a little thing up in Ogden with eleven, count 'em, eleven cars). We decided to go.
As I was finishing my cigarette I said to Curtis, Call and make sure they're open. We are trying to get used to having to do that. He called and left a message. I found a different number for the museum, and called it: not in service. So we were just about to be back to the Flaming Gorge plan when the guy returned Curtis's call.
It's not actually a museum anymore. It was, but the guy has shut it down & now it's just his private collection of cars, spread through three buildings near downtown Salt Lake City, and yes, he'd be happy to open it up for us. He was on his way back from Breckenridge but would be there in about an hour. We got there in about a half-hour, and waited out front until he arrived. He opened up the buildings and went about his business while Curtis and I wandered through his collection of cars. (There used to be about twice as many, but there was a will contest and ... hmmm. What we saw was what he had left after the contest.)
 |
| 1960 Coupe deVille |
 |
| Olds Toronado |
 |
| Packard with guidelamps |
The cars weren't pristine restorations set behind velvet ropes. They were cars in every condition, crammed into the available space. It was OK with him if I opened hoods and doors now and then, and I couldn't resist playing with the fuel-filler cover on the old Cadillac Fleetwood -- you know, the kind hidden in the taillight. There were lots of Cadillacs and Lincolns, including less-often-seen models from the '50s; there was a '64 T-Bird convertible hardtop (my mother's dream car); a '28 Rolls, and '37 Cord, a '29 Auburn, a couple of Packards, some Nashes, big Chryslers, a '64 Imperial convertible and the gigantic GM cars from the '70s.I don't know how long we spent prowling through this guy's collection, but even considering the unpolished state of the display, this was a real treat. Goes a long way toward making up for the disappointment of Rangely and Gateway.
This was a great day. We have nothing planned for tomorrow.
