Day Nine, Road Trip Randomness

I don't know if it came across at all in yesterday's blog, but I was a little grumpy about last night's hotel. I was sort of hoping to stay in a little nicer places while my dad was here splitting the costs with me, figuring we could afford better than the lower end motels I'd been staying at so far. He chose the Irma because it sounded unique and different and he thought it would be a fun night as part of my road trip experience. It was not the nice hotel I was hoping for as it is a historic building, but it worked out fine in the end. This morning, I was much more open to the idea of the Irma, which I learned was the original hotel in town, and seemed to be owned by or have some association with Buffalo Bill, who actually helped found the town of Cody, Wyoming (Cody was his last name) from what I can tell. The place even had an old fashioned toilet of sorts, obviously not from Buffalo Bill's era, but still somewhat of an antique. It was basically a hotel and a museum rolled into one, especially the restaurant, which appeared to have as much of the original architecture and fixtures as was possible as well as some memorabilia lining the walls. There was even an old telephone switchboard on display in the hotel hallway.

All in all, the Irma experience was worth it, but at the same time I'm very glad to be in the more comfortable room at the Comfort Inn in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Speaking of South Dakota, I went to two new states today, Montana and South Dakota. Part of the fun of road tripping across the country is stopping in the little turnouts by the welcome signs for each new state you enter. There have been several times when I have not been the only tourist taking cheesy photographs in front of those welcome signs as proof that I was indeed in that state, even if only for a few minutes/miles, as was the case with Montana today. But in my book, that still counts!While I'm on the subject, some other new states this trip so far have included Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. I had previously been to both Arizona and Nevada. Clearly, I'm doing pretty good in checking new states off the list and I'm not even halfway across the country yet, which means there are plenty more new ones to come!

Today was primarily another driving day. Originally, we were going to try to do Mount Rushmore late afternoon/early evening, but we got somewhat of a late start and the drive through the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming took much longer than we had anticipated thanks to crazy winding roads as illustrated by this road sign!

Prior to the mountains, we ran across an interesting sight: a military airplane graveyard. My dad and I both enjoy studying and looking at different aircraft and therefore decided to take a quick pit stop to look at the planes. Some of the planes were more recent rejects such as the green C-130s below, but some were also much older, including an older Navy war plane and a Royal Canadian Air Force prop plane. It was an amusing and unexpected sight on a beautiful, but somewhat repetetive scenic drive.

In keeping the blog flowing from topic to topic tonight, I wanted to mention something I left out of yesterday's blog which relates to today's plane sighting. As we were driving through Grand Teton National Park, yesterday, we passed by the Jacksonhole airport (seemed random to have a commercial airport in a national park, but whatever) and my dad caught sight of a unique plane sitting on the tarmack. Upon closer inspection, we realized it was a government plane as it had the same coloring as Air Force One, but was a smaller sized plane. My dad guessed that it might be Cheney's plane, which would have a call sign of Air Force Two, since he has a home in Wyoming. I looked online last night and sure enough I found an article stating that he flew home to spend the holiday weekend in Wyoming. Just another random sighting to add to the mix!

Speaking of random sightings, if you were reading yesterday's blog carefully, there was a certain animal that we were unable to find in Grand Teton or Yellowstone. Can you remember what it was? If not, just scroll a bit below and you'll see for yourself!

Yep, you guessed it, that is indeed a real live moose roaming this lush green pasture in the Bighorn Moutains of Wyoming! It was definitely the highlight of the day and is a close second in animal sightings, just behind the awesome sight of the bison walking across the highway in front of my car! Bullwinkle was just having some lunch and had no idea I was jumping up and down on the side of the road snapping pictures and high-fiving my dad that we found both a moose and a bear, which I figured would be the two hardest animals to find!

Finally, I just wanted to brag very quickly that we paid under $4 for gas today! In Gillette, Wyoming gas was between $3.83-$3.87!!! I've mostly been paying between $4.09-$4.29 for most of the trip so far, which is still much better than the $4.50+ I'd previously been paying in Southern California. But $3.84 was a definite record low for my road trip, which pleases me as it should definitely help keep me under budget, well, at least enough to cancel out the unexpected cost of my speeding ticket!

Well, I'm off to bed early tonight for a change, possibly before midnight which has unfortunatley been unheard of this trip. I love doing the blog and I know how grateful I'm going to be to have this momento after it's over, but it has been keeping me up late as I always have so much to say and usually don't get started until around 10pm and don't finish until at least midnight because uploading the pictures takes a long time, both to upload and then choose the best ones for the blog. Again, I'm not complaining, but I am thankful that tonight might be the exception to this craziness! I even got to do laundry tonight! Yay for clean clothes for tomorrow's big, exciting day at Mount Rushmore!!! I hope I find National Treasure 3 there! Wish me luck and maybe I'll share some of it with you!

Day Eight: Buffalo Bill, Yogi Bear,and Bambi, Oh My!

Today was a long and somewhat tedious day of driving and stopping and driving and stopping as my Dad and I traveled through two major national parks, Grand Teton and Yellowstone. However, it was definitely worth it after everything we saw there! Grand Teton definitely had one of the prettiest sceneries so far. I mean, look at the picture that my Dad took below. It's perfectly picturesque and he did a great job of capturing the true beauty we witnessed this morning.

One of the most surprising sights in Grand Teton was that the mountains still had snow on them! Although, it did make some sense as we were up 8,000+ feet and the mountains themselves were 12-13,000 feet, which is pretty darn high! Plus, the weather was a bit cooler today, especiallycompared to the 100+ degree temperatures I've become accustomed to over the past week. It was cloudy for most of the day as well, but we were very fortunate that the rain held off until we were leaving the Yellowstone. Thank goodness for a little luck of the Irish for us Shannons!
After our beautiful drive through Grand Teton, we entered Yellowstone. As most of you know, the major attraction there is the Old Faithful Geyser. To be honest, I wasn't that excited to see it, especially if it meant having to sit there and wait for an hour or more for it to erupt. The park is so big and there are so many other things we could see in an hour that would probably be better than hot water shooting up out of the ground, no offense to the Old Faithful faithful. In another stroke of Irish luck, we arrived at the geyser and only had to wait about 15 minutes before she blew! I'll admit it was cool and I was glad that I got to see the sight that everyone always talks about when referring to Yellowstone, but I was also very glad we didn't waste much time seeing it as that allowed us to see some of the unique wildlife roaming Yellowstone. We saw many signs warning us that animals were in the area and to stay in our car or on the roadside when viewing them in their natural habitats and jokingly took pictures of them because we figured most of the warnings were common sense and therefore amusing. Obviously, if there are bears or bison nearby, we aren't going to go try to pet them. We're perfectly happy to watch them from hundreds of feet away and/or the safety of our vehicle! However, while the signs usually warned against visitors approaching the animals, they never did give us any instructions as to what to do if an animal approached us. I guess park rangers and sign makers must assume that people might not have enough common sense to stay away from wild animals, but believe that we are smart enough to run or hide in our cars when a bear or bison starts charging towards us and therefore saw no reason to print signs exclaiming "Run for your life!" or "Hope your car is as strong as the bison around here!" for those situations. Well, luckily we were the latter park visitors and stayed in our car when Buffalo Bill here decided to cross the highway in front of my car!

Here's the story...We had initially pulled off to the side of the road when we saw a small herd roaming the field on our right side. We were snapping pictures and watching them, amazed at how close we were able to get to these huge and rare wild animals. It's not every day you see a buffalo, except maybe at the zoo, but seeing it in a natural environment was awesome! Just when we thought we'd seen enough and were ready to leave, we watched one of the buffalo walk along the fence towards the road. We thought we'd get a few more great shots with him at the edge of the fence parallel to the road when we then saw him walk right thru a missing section of the fence and right towards the car! We were shocked, excited, and a little frightened as you can imagine, despite still being within the protective barrier of the car. This stretch of highway has very light car traffic and we watched as he made his way to the asphault and mosied on across to the other side and then through another missing section of the fence in the field on the left. We figure the rangers must have done that knowing that the bison liked to graze back and forth between the fields on this stretch of the highway. The bison seemed to know right where he was going and didn't really give us a second look as he walked on by our car, which gave us the opportunity to get some amazing close up shots of one of the largest mammals in the world. It was incredible!

Below is a photograph taken of a different bison later on in Yellowstone. He was just hanging out on the hill, basically posing for all the amazed passer-by, and far enough away from the road that we felt somewhat safe enough to momentarily get out of the car and snap a few quick shots of him. Luckily, he was unfazed by all the attention and barely moved a muscle while we were there!

The other 2 animals I really wanted to see while in Yellowstone were bears and moose since I didn't know when I'd have another chance to see them in the wild. We had made it through most of the park without seeing either when we saw a traffic jam up ahead with people jumping out of their cars and running across the street to see something on the hill to our left. We couldn't see anything from the road and I was driving at the time so I sent my Dad to check it out. He joked later that he couldn't believe I'd sent him out there without knowing whether or not a bear or bison was going to come charging at the crowd of people, but I dismissed it telling him I knew he'd be fine all along. Well, I think I was just lucky yet again as it was indeed a bear off in the distance that everyone was awe-struck over. Since the traffic was stopped anyway, after my dad got a few pictures, he and I switched places so I could grab a few quick pictures of the bear as well. The one below was our best one and I couldn't be happier. We never did see a moose, which would have been the definite highlight of the day, but I'm very happy with our bison friend and the bear, especially since I've never seen either before except perhaps at the zoo.

However, just because we didn't see a moose doesn't mean that our wildlife sightings ended with bison and bears. As the blog title hinted at, we also were able to catch a very close glimpse of a pair of deer enjoying a clearly scrumptious and quiet (though probably not romantic as it appeared to be two male deer) dinner of grass and yellow flowers, a deer delicacy I'm sure.
We also saw some Pronghorns in Grand Teton, which surprisingly were actually grazing in the same field as the bison that crossed the road in front of our car. I'd never heard of them before, so I looked them up and learned that they are a type of antelope. They looked a lot like deer, but had inwardly rounded horns/small antlers that looked like big ears, hence their name, I would imagine. We never got up close and personal with them, but they were still a unique and different animal that I'd never seen before, so they fit in with the theme of today's drive.The last animal we saw today in Yellowstone was elk. We saw them just off the two lane road during a smaller traffic jam of on-lookers. Dad was driving, so I was able to hop out of the car and get extremely close, yet at a safe distance as well, in order to get a few great shots, including the best one below. They didn't look much different from deer from afar, but up close, wow, are they big animals. There were several grazing together and at one point they all perked up at something and raised their heads and I immediately turned and ran back up to the road and the safety of my father and the car! I don't think I was ever in any danger as they appeared to be herbivores, but you never know how these animals might react to an intrusion of their territory and as we discussed previously, I am definitely one of those people with enough common sense to run first and turn back when I'm in the car to see if they actually were chasing me or not!

All in all, it was a pretty great day! But it was a very long day of driving. I thought that since we stayed in Jackson last night, today would be easy since we were only 30 minutes away from Grand Teton. But it ended up taking us around 2 hours to drive thru there b/c of the slower two-lane roads and the random stops along the side of the road to take pictures of the tetons and roaming bison. Plus, I think my dad and I both underestimated how big Yellowstone really is. We only ended up doing half the park, which was plenty as we were able to see the major sights and plenty of wildlife on our drive, but we didn't make it to our end destination for the day of Cody, Wyoming until after 8pm. And we started the day with breakfast at 9am, so it was a pretty long day with quite a bit of driving despite the frequent sightseeing pit stops along the way.

Cody is an interesting little rodeo and cowboy town, which sort of epitomizes the imagery on Wyoming license plates.

My dad found an interesting hotel for the night with a little history called the Irma, which claims to be Buffalo Bill's original hotel back in the 1800's. We didn't get one of the historic rooms like he had hoped, but it definitely had more character than the Days Inns and other cheap hotels I've been staying at thus far. It's been an experience and I'm glad we did it for a night, but I'll be glad to get back to the regular familiar hotel routine tomorrow!Comfort Inn, here we come! Oh, yeah! Nothing but the best...I mean, cheapest and/or only hotel available for me! That's how I roll!

Tomorrow is more driving. We are going to see how the morning/afternoon goes and depending on when we get to Rapid City, South Dakota, we might try to go to Mount Rushmore in the late afternoon in order to view it both in daylight and while it's lit up at night, which we believe they do. Otherwise, we'll just have a much needed quiet evening at the hotel, maybe go to bed early, and then see Mount Rushmore the following morning. We'll just have to see how the day goes. Until next time...

Day Seven, Looked Like Heaven

As I had hoped, today was an easy day. We were able to take our time and just enjoy the drive and time together since there were no major sights to see and no hurry to get to our end destination of Jackson, Wyoming. Plus, I was able to relax a bit during today's journey now that my dad is here and we are taking turns driving by switching every couple of hours. As you can see, I'm very happy to finally be able to enjoy the scenery and not have to take pictures while driving with my knees, although I have become quite talented at that if I do say so myself!

Actually, we did have a destination of sorts along the way. My dad's dad grew up in Ogden, Utah which is pretty much on the way to Jackson, so we decided to stop there and see if we could find his old house which he lived in over 75 years ago! I don't know much about my dad's side of the family because we have just always been closer to my mother's side of the family so I was looking forward to seeing a bit of my Shannon roots for a change. Unfortunately, all we found was an empty lot where the house used to be. My dad said it was and old house that probably either burned down or was condemned and fell down as old houses often do. It was a bummer. It would have been a cool sight to see on this journey of mine, but we tried and sometimes that's all you can do.

While in Ogden, we decided my car needed a hosing down so we stopped in one of those car washes where you pay quarters to use their hoses and soap to wash your car yourself. I'd never been to one of those, but for some reason have always wanted to try it so now seemed like the perfect opportunity. However, by the end, it felt like Dad got more water on me than on the car by the end as he followed me around in a circle with the power hose washing away the soap I was brushing onto the car with a giant broom-like tool. It was an amusing pit stop for sure!

Though I haven't posted them all on the blog, I've been taking photos at every state welcome sign after I cross the border into a new state. It seemed like a good way to keep track of every state I've been in on the road trip and serves as proof that I indeed went to all these places. Plus, it's sort of the thing to do on a road trip. I often haven't been the only one doing it as so many people traveling the scenic highways I've been taking are clearly tourists on road trips as well. My brother is attending Boise State in the fall and so I thought it would be fitting to wear my new Boise State T-shirt as I crossed the Idaho state border this afternoon. I thought it would make a great photo and it did!
We were only in Idaho for a short time on today's drive, mainly because we were so close and I'd never been there before so I figured that since we weren't in a hurry to get anywhere today, now would be as good a time as any to cross Idaho off my list of states left to visit in my lifetime. And for the occasion, I made sure to wear my new Boise State shirt, courtesy of my brother who will start there in the fall!

Another state I was able to cross off that list was Wyoming. I loved the amazing colors of the red cliffs at the Grand Canyon in Arizona and and the orange rocks at Arches National Park in Utah. However, I equally loved today's awe-inspiring scenery of the Grand Teton mountain range in Wyoming. The beautiful evergreens, rich green grass-covered hills, and fields of multi-colored flowers were breathtaking, especially against the amazing backdrop of the bright blue sky full of puffy white clouds. I might have been more intrigued by the multitude of clouds than the forests of trees mainly because weather in California usually consists of clear blue skies, smoggy, hazy skies, or foggy skies. I loved watching the giant, puffy, bright white clouds gracefully float by out the passenger window. It was my favorite activity of the day I think, another great reason I'm grateful my dad is here with me for a bit - so I can cloud-gaze while he drives the car!Isn't Wyoming so beautiful? I used to see Wyoming on the map and wonder why anyone would ever go there, even with the attraction of Yellowstone, but now I completely understand the draw and am so glad I made the trip up here to witness the beauty in person. I know I keep using a lot of the same words to describe these places, beautiful, amazing, awe-inspiring, breath-taking, and I'm trying to come up with more synonyms for them, but to be honest I just don't know how else to describe them. They are so breathtaking that they often leave me speechless and I try to snap tons of extra pictures each day so that the images can hopefully speak for themselves when I am unable to do so on their behalf.
One stretch of the windy, mountain, scenic highway today was under construction and instead of asphault, we had to drive on gravel. It seemed a bit wierd at first, but then we saw a sign that made it all make sense...

Wyoming officials must have wanted the tourists driving down the scenic routes to get the full effect on their road trips and so they graveled a section of the road to make it seem like we were truly driving down the original Oregon Trail! If only we had hitched our covered wagon to the back of my Honda, then we really could have been traveling in style down the Oregon Trail. Ok, so that's not really the truth, the two pictures are merely coincidences, but I couldn't resist spinning the story to make it a bit more interesting! It was so cool to know I have now driven on the Oregon Trail. It was my favorite computer game in elementary school, back in the days of green and black computer screens! Ah, the good ole days! And I didn't die of dysentary this time, yay!

Today's journey was also full of many animal sightings. We saw horses, cows, bulls, and llamas in enclosed pastures and farms. My dad saw a deer but I missed it! Hopefully, we'll see more along the way, maybe in Yellowstone tomorrow! We also saw a duck...well, sort of...

And we saw a whole group of sheep grazing in the open pastures! That was by far the coolest animal sighting of the day, knowing that they were in the wild. I actually couldn't believe they weren't in a fenced-in area, I'm so used to seeing animals in some sort of captivity that I often forget that wild animals still do exist. I guess that's what happens when you live such a sheltered life in the big city like I have for so many years.

It's important to get in touch with nature every once in a while and remember that life, nature, and beauty does really exist outside the concrete jungles of the world, even though it often has to be found further away than the tv screen we often mistake for a window, even further than the touch of the remote or click of the mouse, as well. It's hard to get off our butts sometimes to see the world outside "the great indoors" as John Mayer calls it, but totally worth it. I know I've said it many times already, but I'll keep saying it not only to remind you all, but to remind myself after this trip is over and done. Even if I can't take this kind of time off again anytime in the near future, I know how easy it is now to take a weekend getaway to seemingly far off places that really aren't that far from home. If I want to have some peace and quiet away from the noise of the big city, I know lots of places now where I can go to get those things that are just a few hours drive or a flight away!

After what seemed like a long day of driving, but was in actuality only 6 and a half hours of driving, we finally made it to Jackson, Wyoming, which is roughly 30 minutes from tomorrow's initial destination of Grand Teton National Park after which we'll head into Yellowstone National Park for the remainder of the day. We ate dinner at a place called Sidewinders and my adventure today was having an authentic Buffalo burger, which was pretty good I must say. I could hardly tell the difference between the Buffalo burger and a regular burger, although I don't think Buffalo meat is quite as juicy as regular hamburger meat, it's a little drier, but other than that it was pretty tasty. Hopefully, having a Buffalo burger isn't in poor taste after just discussing all the cool animals I'd seen on the drive today, if it is, I apologize. I just tell it like it happened, and this just so happened to be the order of events of the day.

After arriving back at our hotel after dinner, we got a taste of the friendly natives of Jackson right in the parking. They're so friendly they just come right up to your room window to greet you hello and ask you to come out and play! Who knows who, or what, we'll meet tomorrow in Grand Teton and Yellowstone, but I'm hoping for some more unique animal sightings throughout the day, hopefully while I'm inside the car taking pictures! I swear I'm not a scaredy cat, I'm just not crazy enough to get too close to the natives while saying hello as I've heard their customs are a little different from ours. For example, putting your hand out for a firm handshake in greeting often indicates to the natives that you want to invite yourself to dinner, or more to the point, invite yourself to be dinner! My policy is better safe than sorry, so I'll just remain in the car should I see any animals, keeping my hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times! I'm sure I'll be just fine! Wish me luck!

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!