Olympic Park - Utah - August 26

Today we went to Olympic Park, the home of the 2002 winter olympics and will be the home of the 2034 winter olympics.  They have a pass that you could go on several “rides” as many times as you want in a 3.5 hour time period.  They had an alpine slide, two zip lines, two tubing slopes and a rope course.   It was a great day to go as the weather was gorgeous, it was a Monday and school in Utah has started.  Translation barely a line in sight.  Dave and I enjoyed 6 rides down the alpine slide, 1 ride on the lower zip line and 3 on the “extreme” zipline and one ride down the tube slope.  Brian enjoyed several treks on the alpine slide, but that was all his dislike of heights would allow.  Julie did everything except the longer tube slope.  None of us were fans of the tube slope.   It was down one of the jump hills and man was it steep.  My favorite coming in and still is the alpine slide.  It was my first time doing a zipline and I have to say I enjoyed it more than I thought I might.  Julie liked everything and said the hype I had provided about the alpine slide was justified.

June on the zipline

Alpine slide in a traffic jam

There was one lady in the front of this trip that was going very slow, which caused quite a backup of people.  Dave figured he would take a selfie of him, Julie and Brian.  I was in front because I have the need for speed.

Enjoying the speed

If you look down from the ski lift you will see a small figure, that is Dave on a tube.  It’s basically they push you down the hill.  

This was the tube slides, the left is the lower one that we tried, the right was the higher and steeper one.  The lower was one and done for us and the higher was a hard NO.

We then toured the museums they had on premises which were about the 2002 olympics and then local olympic people overall.  There was a lot of information, but I decided to leave my notebook off duty today, so no list of fun facts. 

They had a booth in the museum where you could take your picture with various backgrounds, so of course we did.

Then it was time for some food, so we went to a local brewery.

til next time…

Catch up - August 22nd - 25th

 August 22nd was a travel day from City of Rocks to Salt Lake City, Utah.  We caught up with some friends from Grad school that we haven’t seen in about 15 years.  Thanks for the visit Hal & Carol.  

August 23rd was a catch up day and prep day for Brian and Julie’s visit, so exciting laundry, food shop, clean.  Then airport pick up and some much needed sleep after late nights visiting.

August 24th we did two unique activities that were found by Julie.  Thanks, Julie.  We did a crater swim and an art trail.

The crater swim/soak was at Homestead Crater.  It is a geothermal spring hidden within a 55 foot tall beehive shaped limestone rock.  The water temperature is constant between 90-96 degrees and a depth of 65 feet.  It was a very relaxing hour.

We then had a nice lunch at the resort and headed to Art on the Trail.  This was a one day event by the Arts Council.  You walked along a trail and along the way there were different performers.  There was a cellist,  a piano/singer duet, ice skaters, a poet, a couple of craft artists, and a trapeze artist.  So you would walk along with the guide and then spend a few minutes listening/watching each persons talent.  The ice skaters were interesting because it was obviously not ice weather, so they “skated” on this surface to just give a taste of their moves.  

The trail was very pretty, had a nice little brook along parts of it.  Even saw a couple of trees that had been gnawed on by beaver.  

August 25th we ventured into Salt Lake City to Temple Square and toured the Tabernacle and Mormon Convention Center and learned about the Temple which was closed for renovations.

The Tabernacle was a gathering place for Mormons that was built between 1863-1867.  It was built with acoustics in mind.  There were no microphones, but you can hear a pin drop if you are all the way in the back and it is dropped on the podium.  They did a demonstration where they ripped paper, dropped a pin and dropped a nail and you could hear all of them from the back where we were standing 170 feet away.   This facility sits 3,500 and has 260 chairs specifically designated for the choir.  The organ has 11,623 pipes.  The other interesting fact is everything was made of pine, even the pillars, which were just painted to look like marble. 

Silver dome building is the tabernacle

The convention center was built because they outgrew the tabernacle.  The convention center seats 21,000.   Two missionaries provided a tour of the four floors of the convention center.  There were many pieces of art throughout telling the mormon story.  They had a model of the Temple and explained what each room of the temple is used for.  It was interesting to learn about another religion.  

We then had a chance to listen to an organ recital in the convention center.  I do not have any statistics for this organ, but as you can see it was mighty.  

We then went and had a nice meal at Benihana.

They had a purple drink on the menu I just couldn’t resist ordering.  It was super yummy in addition to being my favorite color.

til next time…

City of Rocks - August 21st

 Today we hiked the Creekside Towers Trail in City of Rocks and went on a couple of the off shoot trails as well.  Beautiful weather and such interesting rock formations.  We also saw two sets of rock climbers.  Lots of challenges for rock climbers in the area.  We also saw a hawk just hanging in a tree as we were driving the dirt road to the trail.  

Enjoy the pics:

One view of the many rock formations

This rock kind of looked like a mold of someones head from wind and rain

This tree is thriving, though it was tough to tell where it was rooted

So many designs made from wind and rain

View up through an area between two larger formations

I liked the white trees, not sure what kind they are

If you look between the trees, you will see a red spot.  That is a rock climber

If you look on the top of the rock formation, you will see a person and just a little below is another person finishing the climb up.  Makes me think of my nephew, Greg. 

 Amazing strength and courage as far as I am concerned.

This was like a tall little cave that we could go in

Dave saw this face in the rock - we called it monkey rock

Never know what little things you will see like this window

This was called window arch

Window arch and some of the surrounding landscape

Tomorrow we head to Salt Lake City to meet up with Hal & Carol from grad school.  Then on Friday, Brian and Julie are flying in for a visit. 

Til next time…

City of Rocks - August 20th & August 19th Travel day

 August 19th was a travel day from the Lavender farm in Oregon to Almo, Idaho.  Funny sign for the day near Bliss, ID: Hot Springs, exit in 18 miles. Caution: alligators.  Anyone other than Brett willing to share a hot spring with gators?

The other interesting thing we came across was someone moving one of the sections of a farm field watering system.  The truck pulled it and there was a guy on the back steering the back portion.

August 20th - We are staying at a really nice state park campground in Almo with one of the highest concentrations of pinyon pines.  

We did the geology walk in City of Rocks National Reserve today.  One point of information, it is a reserve because when they “saved” the land, they did not take land away from the farmers and owners who already had land in the area.  So as you go through the area there are parts that are the reserve and parts that are private property that people are farming.  That is what makes it a reserve.

Something good to know if you go to a place that is part of the National Park Service you can go on the NPS app and download the information about the park.  They have guided tours as part of that.  Today as we were doing our hike, we could pull up the information about the geology on the trail as we hit the numbered posts on the trail. 

The California Trail went through this area.  You could see the passes and there was one rock that people who came through had signed with wheel grease from the wagons in 1849/50 time frame.

1850 - the D. Tickner travelled the trail 3 times.  I can only imagine his strength

1849

  There was one overlook that we were at that you could see a mountain range that was 100 miles away.  (No picture as it wouldn’t look like anything in the picture). However, the sign showed you the name of all the formations and that this one set of mountains was 100 miles away.

Short geology lesson:

The rocks are made up of 2 types of granite - Green Creek (darker rocks) and Almo pluton (whiter rocks)  Green Creek granite is up to 2.5 billion years old, oldest west of the Mississippi.  Pluton is young at only 28 million years old.  Pluton is an intrusive magma.

The little bowl like holes that collect water are called Pan holes.  Pot holes are in river beds.

There was one rock they talked about called Bath Rock that had a pan hole that was 2 feet deep.  Cowboys and rangers used to bathe there.  We walked around Bath Rock, but did not see this pan hole. 

Enjoy some pics.

My comment for this one is it is natures wonder that sediment gets caught in crevices and trees are able to grow out of them.

Til Next time…

Travel Day sites and Lavender Farm Harvet Host, August 18th

We traveled from Fossil, OR to near Baker City, OR where we are staying at a Lavender Farm Harvest Host.

On the way we saw Mount Rainier.  It was so cool, I just looked off to the side and went wow, look at that.  It looked so majestic.  Dave looked it up on the map to find out that it was Rainier.  We didn’t get to go there, but it was sure impressive from quite a distance. 

We also saw a couple signs that I thought were quite funny:

“Blowing dust area, next 40 miles” - Rt 84 in Oregon

“Caution possible Solar Glare” - solar farm in valley

Once at the farm we had a tour of the Lavender farm.  We learned how they extract oil from the lavender, how they use the buds for food items and how they dry it for bouquets.  He showed us the newer equipment he has to cut the lavender.  He pulls the machine through the rows.  Before that he would do it by hand with what looked like a rug ripper, just a little bit larger.  He showed us the “machine” he used from Portugal to process the lavender into either oil or a distilled product.  There are various kinds of lavender and he experiments with them to make various oils and products.  He was even showing us a new method he is experimenting with to see if he can do the oil and distilling process when he wants as opposed to when he just cuts the lavender.  

The gentleman is retired from the Forest Service and his major in college was soil.  They have been growing lavender since 2016.  He said that winter is their biggest challenge.  One winter they lost 600 plants because it didn’t snow enough to insulate the plants and the wind and cold killed them.   So each winter is a mystery.

Here are pictures of a plant and our views.  

A single plant

View of one of their fields

View of the mountains from the camper

Til Next time…