...And the Rest: Park City Trip

To read the posts from this trip in order, click on this link, then click "newer post" when you get to the end.

To see the pictures from the trip, click on this link.

After another breakfast at our now-favourite bagel place, we both started off on Wednesday feeling the need for some exercise, so I checked my All-Trails app and found what looked like a trail suitable for a fat ol' guy with mobility issues, at a place called Willow Creek. It turned out to be a nice easy mostly-paved two-mile-long path around a small city park out in the northern reaches of Park City. We followed that up with a stop at the Kimball Art Center, which is listed as a museum but isn't; it's a bunch of small studios where Suburban Housewives (if such exist) learn to make the kind of ceramic and painted projects that were once the special province of eight-year-olds at summer camp.

We took the radical step, then, of driving into downtown Park City, the congested five or six blocks of Main Street that, heretofore, we had experienced only on foot. During the day, parking is free, which was a nice surprise, so we found a place on Swede Alley and walked over to the Park City Museum, an unexpectedly large building containing three floors dealing with the city's history, from its founding in the 1880s as a silver-mining center, through the customary Tragic Fire That Destroyed Most of the City, to its rebirth in the 1950s as a ski destination. Notably, Park City was the home of the first and last skier's subway, as a mining company tried to repurpose its existing tunnels and shafts for access to its new ski runs on the mountains above its defunct mine. The experiment lasted but a single season, as the mine was so leaky that soaked passengers on its 16-passenger train would step out into the freezing atmosphere of a Utah winter and "immediately freeze like a popsicle." And of course, the Sundance Film Festival figured prominently in the most recent parts of the town's history.

After a couple of hours at the museum, we walked up the hill to our preferred people-watching spot. Unfortunately, there was a gigantic SUV parked in front of that spot, so we retreated across the street to a bar that offered seats right by a window looking out onto the sidewalk, and there we indulged ourselves with beer and diet coke (and a $5 hamburger special that turned out to be one of the best burgers I've had in a long time). The best thing about people-watching isn't the people -- they are ordinary in every way -- but in the conversation and memories they provoke. How else could two people sit for an hour or two, watching tourists and dog-walkers traipse up the steep slope of Main Street, Park City, and back down? It's not like these were celebrities promoting their films; that happens in late January, when I, for one, am unlikely to ever be in a snow-prone area.

After a spell back at our condo, watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and doing laundry (just because), I made Curtis pick a place for dinner. He stoutly resisted making a decision until it became clear to him that if he didn't pick a place, we weren't going anywhere. He finally made the painful choice, a place called The Boneyard up on Kearns Avenue, which is The Other Major Street in town. Turned out to be a pretty good choice. I had a chicken pot pie that was too much food, and got to watch the Netherlands:Mexico friendly on delayed broadcast from across the room.

Our plans for the final day in Park City involved a trip down to Jurassic National Monument, which is two and a half hours south of our condo. We decided, for that reason, that rather than come all the way back up to Park City just to check out on Friday, we'd check out on Thursday and then stay that night in Panguitch, which is a lot closer to Las Vegas. And a room in Panguitch isn't much more than the money we would save by not having to drive that distance. (The Sacramento Jag uses premium gas. One of the odd things I've noticed is that, while regular gas here costs way more than what it costs back home, premium is about the same price in both places. Go figure.)

So we packed up the car, turned on the dishwasher, and headed off to see the fossils. Grabbed coffee at a 7-11 (best coffee I've had in PC) and picked up some bagels at a place in Heber City (French Toast -- not good -- and Asiago) to eat in the car. We stopped to see Bridal Veil Falls just outside Provo

and then let Google Maps take us to the country's newest national monument.

Instead, it took us to the Bureau of Land Management Field Office in Price, Utah, where the one guy working there wasn't surprised to see us. He showed us where the monument is on the map, and explained the route in excruciating detail, of which my mind focussed on the thirteen miles of "well-maintainged dirt roads".

The monument is a working dig site at a place called the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry. Like Dinosaur National Monument, but on a much smaller scale, it has two small metal buildings covering the active dig sites, where hundreds of bones are being excavated in the painstaking way of modern paleontology. There are a number of hiking trails that take you around the monument, some quite long, but that might be a project for another trip, when I'm not wearing a brace on my ankle. And when I'm driving the Subaru, which I don't mind taking on dirt roads (aka gravel roads), well-maintained or not.

The most interesting facts about the place, to me, are these: (1) the proportion of preserved carnivores is much higher than the proportion of preserved herbivores, and there's almost no preserved plant matter; and (2) no one has yet come up with an explanation for why so many fossils would be preserved in this particular spot. It wasn't a marsh or watering hole, it wasn't a bend in a river where carcasses might wash up, and it wasn't the site of a disaster -- in other words, the fossils were laid down over a long, long time, not in a single cataclysm. There's no discernible reason for this particular fossil field to exist.

The only other stop we made was at Butch Cassidy's boyhood home, right next to the highway in Centerville, Utah, a few miles from Panguitch. A local somebody has contributed to the preservation of this part of the famous criminal's history, which is a one-room log cabin and a small outbuilding. Interesting factoid: the real Butch Cassidy was better-looking than Paul Newman, while the real Sundance Kid was no Robert Redford.

Leaving Panguitch this morning (Friday) I took Curtis through Cedar Breaks, which I had seen eight years ago and thought as beautiful as Bryce Canyon. Curtis agreed.

I then dropped him at his house in North Las Vegas and headed east towards home. Thanks to a number of slowdowns on the highways for construction and accidents, I've only made it as far as Tucson, which is now my Least Favourite Place In The Whole World: dusty, somewhat sleazy, and thirteen hours' drive from home, so I may not make it back tomorrow.

And here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.

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.