day 25 and 26

um...wha?  i guess we should start listening to weather reports.

we woke up to the sound of the crazed snowplow guy careening through the parking lot madly honking at us and pushing a huge pile of snow into the side, causing our rv to rock back and forth.  apparently we were parked in the wrong place.  oops.

so we have our very first snow!  we drove into park city, utah to check out main street.  the home of the sundance film festival.  it was their first snow of the year, so it was kind of bizarre seeing leaves still on the trees that were in mid-color change.  park city has tons of history, so the buildings were all old and beautiful, but the shops were kind of bizarre.  super ritzy jewelry store next to shop that sells t-shirts with fart jokes on them.  high end leather and knitted goods next to cows ice cream.  i could just picture gwyneth paltrow strolling down this street during the festival, ice cream in hand, buying a "may the forest be with you" t-shirt for her daughter apple.  oh yeah.

the kids were in heaven, especially josiah. every five seconds he would ask, "is it still winter?"  he and cliff spent all afternoon outside making snowmen and having snowball fights.

we stayed at an uber-classy campsite (no rvs older than 10 years allowed) and watched the cowboys/giants game while the kids "played" (i use that word loosely) pacman and a racing game in the mini arcade.  usually they got bored halfway through the game and i ended up finishing it for them.  it was a good system actually.  i dominated pacman.  cliff fell deeper in love with me in our early years when we would go to castle fun park and i would kick his butt in the fighting games.  when we were first married, we used to stay up until 3am playing "road rash" on the n64 we got as a wedding gift (thank you phil riley).

in the morning, we headed into salt lake city.  for any of you who have ever been there, you can testify to how amazing it is as you drive around the bend and the mountains suddenly appear in front of you like one of those two dimensional kids pop-up books.  they look fake, to be honest.  brigham young had some good taste, people.  it's gorgeous.

simon fell asleep, so i took allie into temple square while cliff stayed back with the boys.  two lovely ladies, one from korea and one from sweden who are in the us on their mission, toured me through some of the buildings.  i got to go into the tabernacle where they gave an acoustics demonstration.  they dropped straight pins on the podium and you could hear the "ping" all the way to the back of the room.  brigham young had hired a bridge builder to design the building to sound like it does when you're under a bridge.  knowing that it was built in the 1800s makes it even more spectacular.

you can't go into the temple, but they have a miniature replica of what the interior looks like.  there are also several other buildings on the complex which house interactive exhibits and a detailed history of how mormonism came to be.

further west of salt lake city are the bonneville salt flats.  cliff was starting to fall asleep at the wheel, so i got to drive this stretch.

it's where they set land speed records.  some guy drove over 600 mph out there.  have you ever seen "world's fastest indian" with anthony hopkins?  you should.  i love anthony hopkins.  but i've never seen silence of the lambs, so maybe that's why.

photo op with my boy?  yes please.