Making Memories, Part V: Adventureland

For our last day of vacation fun we decided to head up to Park City.  Utah was apparently having a heat wave, and though 104 doesn't exactly feel scorching to me, I still wanted to enjoy a break away from desert temps while on vacation.  Park City was still going to be warm too, but at this time of year highs in the 90's are pretty bearable.

Our first stop was the Olympic Park, which was a complete blast.  The pool was open and people (mostly kids) were out training on the ski jumps:

I put an arrow to highlight-- that guy just went off the ski jump and flipped

I circled the guy coming down the ski jump.  That's how big and high those jumps are.

This guy was the only one going off the REALLY BIG JUMP.  It was impressive!

I guess it had never occurred to me exactly how someone learned how to do freestyle jumps while skiing.  By skiing off a cliff willy-nilly and hoping you land all right?  Nope.  They had trampolines where little kids were learning how to do flips.  Then there were a series of ski jumps, from short ones to the huge one, and a coach who was giving pointers to the line of kids (older ones) who were taking turns going off some of the jumps.  Some kids were just learning how to do a 180 turn when they went off while some of the young adults were doing all kinds of crazy flips.  B said she wants to learn how to do this, but sadly I had to inform her that it wasn't really an option down in our neck of the woods.

The kids were inspired after this though and J finally pestered me into agreeing to take them on the Discovery Adventure Course.  It's a climbing course for kids-- oh, about 20 feet off the ground or so (usually).  This was vacation, so I gave in.  M and Kylie opted to go down the alpine slide instead, but I took J, Bryson, & B and we got suited up with harnesses and ropes.  J was so enthusiastic he kept trying to take off before our instructor finished with the rules, but  his excitement was short-lived.  He freaked out trying to cross the first net obstacle and had to come back down.  It was too bad, but I'm glad if he was going to panic he did it at the beginning.  Once in the middle of the course, the only way out was to keep going forward.

There we are, waiting for the panicking girl in front of us to get up the courage to keep going.

This was the trickiest part for me.  I couldn't get my shoes to fit inside the wood openings!

B loved this.  No fear at all!!!

There was a zipline at the end, and B jumped off just before me.  I was kind of hoping to hear her trademark bloodcurdling scream (I hear she had the most amazing scream on the Tower of Terror at California Adventure) but nope.  Instead, just as she zoomed away she yelled, "This is AWWWESOME!"  I think she's going to be the one on the roller coasters with her daddy!

We followed all this fun with lunch and a break at a playground and then headed out for one last hike in the mountains.  I ended up with trail-envy as well as house envy.  A perfect paved trail system for jogging or biking through beautiful tree-lined valleys!  What I wouldn't give to train on that!!

All in all, a nearly perfect day.  Even The Headache was relatively mild.

It was hard to leave, but at the same time I was ready to sleep in my own bed.  I wasn't looking forward to the trip home, and in some ways there was good reason for that.  We did the drive home in one day this time, and S didn't like being stuck in her car seat that long.  She cried A LOT.  Poor chickadee.  But all roads come to an end eventually, even the ones that trek from the mountains to the desert through the mountains and back to the desert again.  It was a relief to pull into our driveway about 9:30pm.  I just wanted to unload the van and climb into bed.

But wouldn't you know it?  We walked into our house to find that it was 95 degrees inside.  Yep, our a/c had gone out while we were off galavanting in Utah.  There would be no cool restful sleep that night, even if I was in my own bed.

Welcome home!!  The adventure never ends, does it?