Park City Vacation: Friday Fun!

Bernie had a great Thursday fishing...I had a fine half day at work.

Friday was to be our day to have FUN!

(Above: The timeshare where we were sleeping in late on Friday. There was no need to rush. We knew we had plenty of time for all that we were planning to do.)

I wanted to be cute for our fun date, so I decided to wear my newly purchased Bermuda length shorts and my Alaska tee shirt from our 25th wedding anniversary trip.

Gee it had been a long time since I wore shorts above the knee. Those cropped pants have been so comfortable the last few years. But it was pretty warm outside...I figured it would feel good to have shorter shorts on.

Naturally I remembered to lather up my arms and face with sunscreen. I even got my neck and ears, and pulled on a new Park City baseball hat to be sure I would not get sunburned.

We headed out for breakfast at 11. Um...make that for lunch instead.

A pretty sunlit patio: Perfect. A Bison burger for B., a turkey sandwich for me.

Sugar water for all the hummingbirds that were zipping around us.

Oh look! A pretty flower! Gotta take a picture!

Oh look! A pretty assortment of flowers and plants in a pot.

(Bernie is getting used to this habit of taking pictures of flowers. He usually moseys slowly on ahead while I indulge my shutterbug habit.)

Maybe I can copy what they did in that planter for my own porch later. Once that little documenting task was taken care of, we headed to the small amusement park's ticket booth.

We could either buy tickets for each "ride" or buy an all day pass. Or buy several tickets for things we were interested in.

B. has structured multi-million dollar contracts, I have an advanced degree. Both of us were totally confused by the ticket menu.

What to do...what to do.

Ah, what the heck. Give us the all day pass to everything!

With plastic "bling" pass bracelets, we were ready to GO WILD!

Look out rides...here we come!

Me: Let's start slow. Let's take the chair lift up the hill and look around first.

And that is what we did. It was just a little after noon at that point.

Up up up we went...overlooking all the ski runs that are permanently carved through the forested hills.

I was excited to see a little fall color out there.

The aspen's white trunks looked like white legs.

Speaking of white legs...at that point my knees were starting to pink up. Once we get back down the mountain I should walk back to our room and put more sunscreen on my knees.

Come to think of it...I'm not sure I put any on my knees in the first place.

You can see some of the cart tracks through the woods. Ever so often a cart would whiz past with people screaming like crazy.

We definitely should get around to doing that ride today. Especially since we can ride together!
The cart is on a track...that should make it easier to manage.

But let's start off with the carts that aren't on a track.

They roll down a chute. If you want to go faster, you push forward on the handle. If you want to go slower, you pull back.

I pulled back the whole way down.

B. was at the bottom a couple of hours before I got down there.

He asked why I didn't feel like cutting loose.

I explained I *might* have, if I had been wearing a helmet.

And that I really did have fun...and it would have been even more fun if the carts were not so small.

Riding with my knees up around my ears and my spine twisted in a C shape felt more like being put into a trash compactor.

Not that I've even been put into a trash compactor.

You get what I mean....right?

Next: The zip line! We walked up to a platform, and a guy strapped me into a strange collection of webbing. Then he had me put my feet up against the bar. Then he did he same to B.

Why do all these rides seem to require us to roll up into a small ball?

So there we were, holding on to the webbing, our noses between our feet, wondering what this ride was going to be like when we would go shooting down the hill suspended on a cable.

The guy who had strapped us in casually asked us if we wanted to be surprised, or have him count down-

3...

2...

and he sprung the door open before we had a chance to answer.

After a few moments of screaming I decided I really, really liked this. The wind was whistling through my hair, and it was so wonderful!

Then we slowed down...and stopped a few yards before the landing platform.

"Swim with your arms!" the girl on the platform yelled. "Kick your legs!"

She eventually was able to reach me with a crook and hauled me in.

How embarrassing. But I have to admit, I loved the feeling of flying through the air.

Next up: Another person strapping me in.

And BOING! BOING! BOING!

This would be a blast if the webbing didn't dig into the tendons on the inside of my upper leg with each bounce.

"I'm done" I told the young lady watching me.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yup. I know I'll have bruises tomorrow if I don't stop now."

(It is good to be old enough to know these sort of things.)

"And if I change my mind, I can always come back for more. I've got an all day pass you know!"

Let's try that track thingee where everyone was screaming so loud.

B. was in the back, I was in the front.

We were told we needed to hold down the mechanism on the side in order to have the cart be pulled up to the top.

B. couldn't reach it.

I could...and it was tough to hold that baby down.

I was exhausted by the time we go to the top of the hill.

Once we got up to the top...Whoa Nelly!

The person in front (me) got to hold on to a flexible upside down U shaped piece.

This provided no security whatsoever as the cart screamed around cork screw turns and barrelled down whoopdeewhoops that had me clenching my teeth and screaming at the same time.

It was a BLAST!

By the time we were back at the station, I was exhausted.

B. wanted to go again...by himself this time.

He was pretty wobbly when he got back. Man...that thing was really fast!

What did we want to do next?

I wanted to go on the merry-go-round with the toddlers, but I was apparently just a tiny bit too tall. We decided to ride the chair lift again, only this time we would take it all the way up to the top.

A full 30 minutes on a v-e-r-y slow lift. We admired the trees, then had a chat about the trees decorated with bras, panties and beads. Bernie informed me this was a tradition: you were to toss whatever you had "gotten" the night before your first ski run.

There is SO much I don't know about skiing....

At the tippy top of the mountain were flowers.

Must take pictures of flowers.

Several pictures of flowers....

Trying to get just the right shot. You know how it is.

It will look so different up here in a couple of weeks.

I just love the names they give these ski runs.

Why does something called a "Widowmaker" or "Nail Driver" sound so ominous?

Personally I like slopes called "First Time" or "Bunny Run" better.

Proof that we have been to the top!

We walked around a bit...then headed back down. Another long slow lazy ride.

I really should have gone back to the room for sun screen earlier.

One full hour of riding with my legs dangling in the sun.

Oh well...it will be OK, don't you think?

We ride past the timeshare pool, and the six waterfall fed hot tubs.

Won't a swim feel good later? It sure is hot out here.

A snow cone. What would a hot fun day be like without a snow cone?

The stand had about a hundred flavors to pick from.

Bernie went with a blue and purple mix.

I went with cherry and banana. Isn't it funny that he got blue and I got.....

Red?

(It looks awful, but wet towels, aloes and pain meds from the tooth implant made it not so bad.)

We certainly did up the park like a couple of mad cap kids would you say?

No lines to wait in anywhere...we could have gone on any ride as many times as we wanted to!

If someone had told us 40 years ago that we would have an all day pass to an amusement park, and would only go on each ride once (and skipped some of the options, like rock climbing...) I think I would have not believed him.

The next morning the trees outside our window had really started to turn.

We quickly threw our stuff in our bags...

I put the white roses that B. had given me into a plastic sack, and we walked out of room at the stroke of ten. The maids rushed in as we left. We are GOOD. We got every second of our time before check out time.

We stopped by home to feed the cats and unload the flowers, and then we were off for another BIG adventure!

More about that...tomorrow.