At the beginning of the summer I started talking to my kids about having a family vacation together, them and me. We bounced around a few ideas of where and what to do. I started out with my top 3 choices being Lake Tahoe, Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon.
When Spencer used up all his vacation time for his road trip to Tennessee in early June, and I used most of my vacation time between my trip to England and girls' camp and Jenni got her new job which made it hard for her to take a lot of time off, I trimmed down my aspirations and knew I was going to have to settle for a nearby weekend getaway.
In all my years living in Utah, I have never been up to Snowbird. I had no idea they had so many great activities. So I signed us up for a stay and play package that got us a room, a buffet breakfast and an all day pass to all the activity venues they had going, as well as use of the facilities which included swimming pool, hot tub, steam & sauna rooms, and fitness center. All at a reasonable rate. It sounded like a good match.
Well this weekend, August 24-25 was our reservation. Jenni chose not to join us so it ended up being only Spencer and I. Friday night was sort of a laid back night. Spencer had been up since 4 am and was quite tired. He didn't get up there until 7 pm. I had come up straight from work so I was pretty hungry.
Once we got Spencer settled into our room, which was on the 5th floor with a patio looking towards the mountain, we went and ate at the Steak Pit. Spencer ordered the 1 lb. ribeye steak and had no problem eating the whole thing, along with a baked potato and salad. I ordered the teriyaki chicken breast, which turned out to be horrible and only half baked. I complained about it so they asked if there was something else I wanted, so I requested their smallest steak, a petite sirloin. That turned out to be heavenly, quite tasty.
We just ended up going back to the room and found Jurassic Park 3 on the tv and watch that while I tried to solve the USA Today crossword puzzle, occasionally getting some help from Spencer. The theme of the puzzle was Box Factory and they had 3 places where the clue was 3 types of boxes. It took me a long time to figure out that they had put 3 words together, each one describing a type of box. For example there was - match(box), penalty(box), bread(box), tackle(box), etc. We figured out all but two of them and a few other clues.
I would not recommend staying at the lodge at Snowbird. The walls were paper thin. We turned the lights out at midnight and Spencer went right to sleep because he was so tired. I laid there listening to someone who had their TV on way too loud as well as people visiting and laughing until 2 am and it all sounded like it was right in our room.
The breakfast buffet was very enjoyable in the atrium. Nice setting, good food. After checking out of our room, we headed over to the activities. I think our favorites were the zipline and the alpine slide. We did both of those twice during the day.
The ropes course was not very challenging, the line for the bungee trampoline was too long and slow. The rock wall was not very challenging for Spencer. He scampered up it in no time. I'm a loser because I could only make it halfway up the easiest side of the wall. Pretty lame, I know.
We also rode the aerial tram up to the top of Hidden Peak - 11,000 ft. altitude. It was a on the cool side up there, but it felt good. We hiked a good way over to Mt. Baldy, but didn't go the full distance. It was a cool trail because it was right on the ridge line and you could look down on both sides of the mountain as you hiked.
You can see how the trail was right on the ridge in this picture.
Mineral Basin is behind Spencer.
The view from Hidden Peak
The grimace was from looking into the sun, not because I wasn't having a good time. I was hoping this picture would show the rows of mountain ridge after mountain ridge that you could see from the top.
Spencer was smart and kept the shades on so he could manage to smile for his photo. I hope these shots give you some idea of how high we were!
We went through the Peruvian tunnel and rode the Peruvian tram back down the mountain. It was quite a relaxing ride.
By mid afternoon the activities were a lot more crowded and beer mugs were seen everywhere because of Octoberfest. I bought & ate the best piece of german chocolate cake. Spencer settled for a pretzal and pizza. Spencer was excited to find a booth that had long john's with a butt flap. He said he's been wanting a pair of pajamas like that for a long time. He bought himself a pair. Now I challenge him to let me take a picture of him wearing them so I can post it on this blog. I found a very nice wall hanging that said - When you hug a fireman you feel warm all over, as well as another item that I will not reveal at this time as it is going to be either a birthday or anniversary present for him in Dec or Jan.
I thought it was a pretty fun time. I would like to make it an annual tradition to do a weekend getaway with just me and my kids. Hopefully Jenni will join us next year, along with Alyssa since she should be back in the states by then.
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