Another Day or Two: Park City Trip

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.

Waste Not ... uh ... something something

 So we had a "bonus week" available, a not-quite-free stay in a condo provided by the company that we book through sometimes for our annual Condo Week trips. There are some restrictions, mainly that we can only book a month and a half in advance. We've had this bonus week for almost 2 years, and have sat on it thinking that, eventually, we'd want to use it. Then Coronavirus showed up, and suddenly it's not something my wife is interested in.

We were going to let it go by the way -- it expires near the end of this month. Were we going to the Lake this October, like we usually do around the time of the Huntsman Games? Would I get to make another trip in the Sacramento Jag? Did I even want to? What about the dog? Things seemed to conspire against it, so we reconciled ourselves to the thought that it would go unused. The Huntsman Games were cancelled; Nancy, who usually meets us out at the Lake, had her schedule all disarranged by the virus; I injured my foot in Jackson this summer and my mobility is limited. All kinds of things were keeping the planning in flux, so finally I just decided: I was going to see what was available, and just go somewhere. 

Park City, Utah, is the choice I made. I contacted my old friend Curtis, who lives in Las Vegas; he and I have gone hiking every October for a few years, in conjunction with the Huntsman Games. I could collect him, we could go up to Park City, and spend a week in a condo doing whatever it is people do around Park City in October. I could be back in time for the rescheduled trip to the Lake in the second half of the month. I would get to take the convertible, I would get to visit the two remaining counties in Utah, I would get to go to the two car museums I wanted to see in remote parts of western Colorado, and we could have our traditional hike-and-kvetch trip. Hiking would be limited this year, because of my injury, but kvetching is undiminished by the pandemic. It'd be great.

Well, so far, it's only good. The drive out, on the freeway, was of course as boring as three days on the freeway can be (athough it was better on the third day, after I collected Curtis, who can make conversation). I spent the first night, Wednesday, in a dreary little mom-and-pop motel in Lordsburg, New Mexico. It seemed okay until I decided to take a shower, and found that there was no cold water available. And the hot water was really, really hot. Thursday night I was at the Strat, in Las Vegas. This is the hotel with the 1200' tower with an amusement park on the top. The room was reasonably priced, even with the "resort" fee, and I had a nice view toward the east from 20-something floors up.

sunrise from the hotel

I didn't see the amusement park, but I did go up to the bar for a look around. Vegas is a sleazy-looking place in the daytime, but at night it looks as exciting as everybody seems to think it is. Vibrant, colourful, flashy, as long as you don't look too close. Downstairs in the hotel there's the usual over-the-top casino, designed to disorient. I walked through it a few times on one quest or another, and managed to get lost almost every time.

In the morning, I loaded up the car in the parking garage (one of the reasons I picked this hotel is that they offer free parking in their garage) and headed out to get Curtis. When I got to his place and got out, I found two slashes, about 5 inches long, in my convertible top. I'm just guessing the work of the passenger in the white Toyota that parked next to me in the garage. So that free parking will turn out to be the most expensive parking I've ever had. 

The drive from Curtis's house to Park City is, according to Google Maps. a little less than six and a half hours. We managed to do it in about ten. I mention this because I don't know where all that extra time came from. I mean, I always manage to exceed Google Maps' estimates, because I don't quite go the speed limit usually, and I make a lot of stops along the way. But three and a half extra hours ... well, that may be some kind of record. 

I was really only concerned about it because I knew we'd have to check into the condo. But around 4:30 that afternoon, the condo office called my landline to give instructions on how to check in. Ain't it lucky, there was someone to hear the message. (Actually, there is a sign on the office window with a phone number to call for late check-in.) 

It being late and already dark, all we did Friday night was walk up the road to "downtown", about 8 blocks away. Lots of cars but not many people out; but all the restaurants were full and each had a few groups waiting for seating. We first located a place that would be showing the Aston Villa:Liverpool match on Sunday -- first things first -- and then turned our attention to somewhere for dinner. 

In the relentlessly trendy heart of Park City, we were unable to find any truly satisfyingly ordinary place to grab a light supper. We ended up at some overblown fusion place that may actually have a name, but the only thing that attracted us was the fact that there was nobody ahead of us in line for a table. The restaurant's virus protections were over the top (a good thing): the server who took our order was not allowed to touch anything on the table; they had designated employees going around collecting menus. When it was time to pay, they gave us a sanitizing towel for the credit card. Impressive. The food was good, and only moderately overpriced. The ambience was nice -- we sat outside, with a propane heater nearby to keep the slight chill at bay. 

Saturday, having verified on line that the car museum in Rangely, Colorado, was open from 10AM to 6PM, we went for breakfast in Heber City and then drove east. It's about three hours, each way, and included passing through one of the two counties I had yet to visit in Utah. The sky was clear, though oddly hazy at the edges when we left Park City. The route took us through national forest lands, with trees and rivers and reservoirs in the first half of the trip, and high desert after that. There is, I am always reminded, a stark beauty to desert landscape, and this trip was no exception. It was almost as colourful as the Painted Desert: greys and reds overtopping each other, browns dark and light, mountains in the distance ... except that there didn't seem to be any distance. In fact, throughout the day, the visible horizons got closer and closer, and the scent of wood smoke got stronger and stronger until the sun turned red at four in the afternoon. Ah! Fires out west! That explains it.

smoke from forest fires

So after our three-hour drive to Colorado, we pulled up in front of the Rangely Auto Museum. Which was closed.

feet on the ground: Kennedy Station

We had lunch in a little Italian place in town, then headed back through the smoke. I took a detour through the little community of Bonanza, Utah, just for the variety, and along the way we found a historical marker for Kennedy Station, a stage stop on the route between Vernal and the Dragon Mine.

 

 

sheep parade

 We also got stopped by a flock of sheep running across the road in single file on their way to a watering hole. After watching them for a few minutes I decided just to plow my way through, as there appeared to be about twenty minutes' worth of sheep yet to cross. They were still crossing when they went out of sight in my rearview mirror.

So now it's Sunday. Breakfast this morning was in a grill a few miles up the road. There aren't a lot of choices in this town. This place wasn't bad, but the service was ... uneven. Hint to waiters: when someone orders coffee, that should include cream, sugar, sweeteners, and a spoon. And when you refill the cup, it's best to stop pouring before pulling away. And even in a fancy-schmancy resort town like this, two dollars for a single slice of toast is too steep.

Well. So. Sunday noon and we head down to Main Street, where we earlier identified a bar that would have the Aston Villa:Liverpool match showing. That match proved to be a metaphor for this entire trip so far: exciting, engaging, intensely disappointing. Villa beat the Reds, 7:2. Sadness overwhelms.

But not for long. After the crushing defeat, we walk farther up Main Street to the top of the town, thinking of making a small hike to the Ontario Tunnel, which turns out to be a drainage culvert. Somehow that lacked appeal, so we went back down the hill a ways and found a shaded bench where we planned to do a little people-watching. That turned into hours and hours of people-watching, and so far that has been the best part of this trip.