High on the Mountain Top (Part I)

This weekend was a physical and spiritual feast for Benjamin, Zachary and me.

It began on Thursday morning. As usual before a big trip, I ran around like mad searching, packing and repacking till either I ran out of time, or I thought we had everything we might possibly need. Cindy thinks I'm crazy sometimes, but hey...a Scout is prepared, right?

Cindy drove us to Dallas Love Field (love that name for an airport!) where we boarded a Southwest flight through Albuquerque, NM and on to Salt Lake City. Using a service called Hotwire (http://www.hotwire.com/) we had a rental car for $23/day and a Hilton Hotel for $56 a day. What a deal! :-)

We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and went out in search of a restaurant. Now, Cindy had sworn me to not bring my laptop on this vacation. Even the boys had at one point asked "Dad, are you going to bring your laptop? (Zachary)". I told them I wouldn't, and Zachary immediately says "YES!". Can I tell you how long it has been since I've been anywhere without a laptop? It was difficult I must admit. Not that I would have worked on this vacation, but being able to Yahoo Yellow Page your restaurants in an unfamiliar place is SOOOO much better than the alternative.

But that is what we were left with. The alternative. And being male and not liking to ask directions, we set out. After all, I had been to Salt Lake before...it's all just a big grid, right? Got to be some major streets out there with restaurants!

After driving around for two hours looking for something...having visited the Temple area, Redwood Road, West Valley, East Valley, North Valley...University of Utah Campus...basically everywhere, we finally ran into Trolley Square! It was now 8:30 pm, and the boys and I are really hungry. And I couldn't for the life of me find a parking space there, let alone a restaurant that wasn't packed to the hilt.

So Zachary finally says it, "Dad, can't we just stop at that A&W Rootbeer place right there and go back to our hotel and swim?" And that's exactly what we did. It (A&W) was much better than I thought it would be. And after an hour of swimming and another hour of "How Things Work" on the Discovery Channel, we were all fast asleep in bed.

Friday morning dawned bright and beautiful. No clouds in the sky, and three eager skiers. There was one problem though. Despite all my careful planning, I still needed one more pair of ski socks for the boys, and I needed a new pair of ski goggles. I knew of a place called Canyon Sports on the way up to the ski resorts and it turned out they were having a blowout sale at one of their stores, so off we went. That combined with breakfast at Carl's Diner (a local hole in the wall but very good) got us up to Alta Ski Resort by 10am. By 10:45 we were outfitted and ready to begin.
This was Zachary's first skiing experience, and Benjamin's third. After a rough start on the bunny slope and rope pulls (big mistake) we took a chance and took the lift!

Benjamin was elated, Zachary nervous, and I was beside myself - I love skiing! And even more, I loved teaching Benjamin and now Zachary how to ski and seeing them get it. So enough of my words on the matter...see for yourself how they did:

Yes, that is a Blue - we finished the day on the Supreme Ski lift! They are not parallel skiing yet, but they both did awesome and can snowplow and even cruise with the best of them! See the video below:

and this one taken earlier in the day (Zach's just getting up from a wreck at the start, and towards the end, Ben is on the left and Zach is on the right).

All in all, we had a blast skiing and followed it up with an evening of swimming, watching TV, pillow fights, and jumping on the bed! Ahhh.....vacation!