Day Six, Patriotism in Park City

First let me start off by wishing everyone a Happy 4th of July! Hope everyone had a relaxing day and were able to see some fireworks!

Today was thankfully a less strenuous day for me. I only had a 2 hour drive to Salt Lake City where I picked up my dad at the airport. It was around lunchtime and we were pretty hungry, but didn’t see much along the highway that looked appetizing so we decided to head up into the mountains to Park City. It’s only about 30 or 40 minutes from Salt Lake. I was definitely willing to wait as I was looking forward to finally eating decent food for lunch in a real restaurant instead of the usual McDonald’s or other fast food I’ve been eating in the car while driving from destination A to destination B each day. We found a cute little shopping center just outside of downtown Park City and ate at a nice place called Red Rock. I had a great meal of Chicken Parmesan, definitely the most satisfying meal thus far! And I had freshly brewed root beer. I think root beer is pretty popular in Utah since it's a dry state, meaning hardly any alcohol to be found, which turned out to be lucky for me since I'm a huge fan of root beer! Mmm, mmm, good!

As luck (or possibly my father’s previous knowledge of the location) would have it, the restaurant was across the street from our main attraction of the day, the Olympic Park where the Winter Olympics were held in 2002. It was a great patriotic destination for the 4th of July. It was weird being there in the summer though, trying to imagine what it looked like in the winter with all the skiers flying off the ski jumps and the bobsledders racing down the ice tracks at g-force speeds. However, the unique thing about this facility is that athletes are able to train during the summer as well. We were fortunate enough to witness a few athletes, or wanna-be athletes, practicing their ski jumps. How you ask? Is there snow and ice up there year-round? Not exactly. Instead, they ski down a long ramp with the help of some misting to assist in faster gliding, jump off the ramp, and land in a pool of water. They even have special pipes under the water that release compressed air as the skier is jumping so that when they hit the water to make the landing have a little less harmful impact. We all know what a belly flop feels like and can only imagine what it would feel like falling front first 30 feet into the water. Not a good feeling, so it’s good to know they have managed to find a way to protect these athletes while they train.

We also were able to go on a tour of the park. While waiting for the tour to start, we wandered around the museum and looked at the official medals, went for a quick downhill ski, practiced our bobsledding moves, and carried the Olympic torch for a bit. A pretty typical day, well, for us anyway.

We also went outside to the pool area to watch some beginner ski jumpers practice on the smaller jump. We learned that for a nominal price of $100 or so, anyone can take a ski jumping lesson at the Olympic Center. Or, if that’s not really your thing, you could always take a ride in a real bobsled down the actual Olympic course, flying through the curves at 70-80 mph. They also had zip lines where you get strapped in harness and sail through the air on a wire from the top of the hill to the bottom, fairly quickly from what we could tell as we watched from the bottom. My dad and I, we like the bottom. It’s safe down there, you get pretty good views of lots of different things. We sometimes like the top too, so long as there’s a car or stairs that will get us back down to the bottom. We’re not very adventuresome and are just slightly afraid of heights, so we like to sit back, relax, and watch all the crazy people do the crazy things. I know this trip is all about having great adventures, but I think going to the Olympic Park at Park City was a pretty cool activity for the day and that living vicariously through others is not always a bad thing. Trust me!
Finally, we boarded the bus for the tour, which took us to the top of both the ski jumps, the luge track, and the bobsled course. For those that don’t know, here’s a quick Winter Olympics lesson. The bobsled is the big torpedo-looking sled with a team of people riding in it and it has brakes, a very important distinction! The luge is a little sled that a person lies on feet-first and races down the track. There is also a skeleton, which is a sled similar to the luge, but it has four metal braces on the sides and the athlete rides face first – that has to be the craziest sport I’ve ever heard of! Face first on a little sled as you fly at break-neck speeds down an icy race track…yep, definitely crazy! It was really cool to have the perspective from the top of the park looking down not only the giant ramps and long, curvy courses, but also at the different lodges and time shares in the beautiful mountain area just outside Park City, and also to be able to stand at the bottom of the park and look up at the ramps and courses as well and see how far up we really were and how brave those athletes must be to compete in such dangerous-looking and adventurous sports. I definitely have more admiration for winter sports athletes than I did before. And there was really something cool about being at the place where an Olympic Games had taken place. I know that the Coliseum where I witnessed many USC football games was also an Olympic facility, but to me it’s just a football stadium. The Olympic Park in Utah definitely had a more Olympic and patriotic feel to it and it was so perfect that we were able to be there on the most patriotic day of the year, 4th of July.

For dinner, we headed into downtown Park City, which actually served as the Olympic Village in 2002. Once again, it was hard to imagine what it must have been like during the actual Olympics. It was pretty crowded today, I can’t fathom how packed the streets must have been with athletes, trainers, media, spectators, security, etc. I’d love to attend the Olympics someday, but I must say that it was much less stressful being in an Olympic park and village when there were no Olympics actually going on at the time! We ate a unique local place called Bandit’s Bar and Grill, which had a rustic atmosphere to it, similar to what I imagine ski cabins and lodges look and feel like, so it proved to be a fitting place to dine in the ski town of Park City. We had heard that there would be a big fireworks show at a big resort nearby and thought we’d be able to see them well enough from the downtown area, but unfortunately they weren’t supposed to start until dusk, which in Utah seems to be about 10pm at night. It was only 8pm when we finished dinner so we walked up and down the long, uphill main street several times to pass the time. Finally around 9:45pm we saw a few fireworks go off, but couldn’t see them very well. We were both tired and decided we’d seen “fireworks” on the 4th of July and headed back to the hotel. However, as we were driving back we saw tons of cars still parked and people still sitting on blankets and chairs all along the downtown Park City and even further outside it heading back toward the highway and no one was leaving. We eventually realized we must have seen someone’s personal fireworks show in their backyard and had jumped the gun a bit on leaving. But we were still resigned to heading back and getting some sleep. Ironically, we’d left the tv on in the room and when we walked in the room, guess what was playing on CBS? A fireworks show from Boston! We ended up getting to see fireworks tonight after all! It was too funny!
All in all, it was a great day and I’m so glad my dad is finally here to share some of this exciting journey with me. Tomorrow is just a mellow driving day, heading up to Jackson, Wyoming just outside of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. It’ll be nice to take a break from driving for part of the day and let my dad drive for a stretch so I can fully enjoy some of the scenery for a change. No attractions to stop at on the agenda unless we come across something cool along the way. You never know on these scenic highways what we might find!