A great trip

I enjoyed a great quick trip to Salt Lake City over Labor Day weekend...

We left on Fri at around 1:45 p.m. and arrived in SLC at around 11 p.m. It's a long drive but pretty at this time of year. We got up on Saturday and hung out with my mom and sister and my other sister's kids who were visiting as well. The kids swam at Mom's pool, and then we went to a Real Salt Lake soccer match vs. Denver. It was pretty fun. The most people you'll find at an event here in Blgs is around 10,000 but at this soccer game there were over 17,000 people so it was really fun to feel the crowd and get into the mob mentality. Fun times. Even if they lost 1-0.

Sunday we got up slowly and then rushed to get to Lagoon to meet my family at the entrance ~ we had arranged to meet at 11:00 a.m. After we'd been waiting there for 15 minutes I remembered that my family is NEVER on time, and we started making calls. My brother said he'd be about an hour late, he had already let my mom know. My sister was just getting into the shower and would be late as well. My mom never answered her phone. Finally at around 11:40 my mom got there and we were able to go in. My brother arrived after we'd been in there for a short while. I've been married to a punctual man of German lineage and I've become puctual since being married to him. I always forget that I come from people who run on Mormon Standard Time. Regardless of the rocky start, it ended up being a great day!

When I was in my late teens I was at the fair and went on a couple rides that went around and around and got sick in the garbage can once I got off. I figured I had gotten too old for rides and that was it. I haven't really been on rides since. But this weekend my brother convinced me to go on some rides that I hadn't been on since childhood, and can I just say: I'm not as old as I thought I was!!! I had so much fun! The rides I went on include:

The Rocket ~ a ride that has two versions...take off and re-entry. You sit in this little seat with feet dangling, and the bars lower over your chest and you hang on to them for dear life, because without warning suddenly you are shot straight up FAST, and then you drop and go back up and down until it stops and the torment is over. Holy shit, can I just say the re-entry one that drops you from the top is WAY WORSE than the one that starts at the bottom! We got to the line at 9:45 p.m., and they said there was a 15 minute delay, so we waited, and wondered what was up. Apparently the aparatus that lowers over your body to "strap you in" didn't stay hooked and they were fixing it...But I didn't know this until I was already strapped in waiting for it to lift me. The gal comes around and does a pull-check on each of our seats to see if they are secure, then I heard the guy on the microphone say, "It'd be a good idea to check them all one more time." A minute later we were suddenly being slowly lifted, and all I could say was, "Oh shit, she didn't come back and check ours!!" I knew then that I was dead. I was frantically doing my own check and then making sure my white knuckle grip was strong enough that if my seat decided to malfunction, I'd be OK since my death grip wouldn't allow me to leave the seat anyway. That drop is so intense! Crazy!

The Spider ~ a roller coaster where the cars are made for 4 people who sit back to back, and the car spins around on its base while it goes on the track. Very cool.

The Wild Mouse ~ I forgot how bad I hate that ride...it looks so mild when you watch it from the ground, but it kicks butt. I'm afraid I swore too many times in my daughter's ear as we were whipping around all those little loops it has. Horrid ride!

The Wooden Roller Coaster ~ that bad boy should probably be condemned, it's that old and rickety. The fear factor on that ride is real. It truly feels like it's gonna jump the rails and send you to your death. I remember my dad telling stories of when he was a teen and worked Lagoon...they'd ride the car hanging off it backwards, and pull out any nails that were sticking out.

The Jet Star ~ a smaller roller coaster that is way fun to go on. My husband even went on it with me! He didn't do too many rides after that. He thought about the Wild Mouse but thankfully he didn't! He'd have never forgiven me if he'd experienced it with no warning from those of us who had been there before.

The Log Ride ~ the ride had such a long line that we stood in for half an hour, and it was way not worth the long wait. But it was fun to stand there with my brother and laugh at our own observations of some of the people in line with us. One lady, swear to God, looked just like the old lady in the movie Goonies, you know, the bad guy's mom. And we had a good secret laugh at the two guys, one who was young and handsome as all get-out, who was with this way older man, who I thought must be his dad from first glance, until the old guy leaned forward and started nibbling on the other's shirt. I mean NIBBLING. Plucking at it with his lips between his shoulder blades. I saw him do it at least 10 times. We had a good laugh because it was so blatantly intimate in this hot line of people, and they didn't look like a couple at first glance. Now, before anyone gets any wrong ideas, I have nothing against gay people, one of my brothers is gay, and I love him dearly. It would have been just as much fun to laugh at a guy and girl if they had been doing the same thing. I guess what was so fun about standing in that line was the feeling of going back in time with my brother, who was my best friend growing up, and practicing our well-honed skill of making derogatory remarks about others in secret, just to make each other laugh. Nothing personal. And nevermind that I felt secretly jealous that I never had a relationship that loving or whatever that someone felt like nibbling on my shirt in public. Sigh. Honeymoon's been over a LOOONG time.

Rattlesnake Rapids ~ where you sit in these big round boats and get soaked as you head down these rapids and under a waterfall. I got drenched under that stupid waterfall! It was tons of fun. I think my tennies got ruined. I KNOW my kids' tennies got ruined. That stench is something for the recordbooks.

I'm sure I went on other rides but can't recall them all now. It was loads of fun. I was so impressed with my 8 yr old daughter, though. She went on all the big rides (she did Colossus 3 times!) and loved them. I thought for sure she'd be scared to death. Instead, while we're on the Spider and I'm screaming "OH SHIT" at the top of my lungs, she's screaming "Righteous! Righteooooss!" at the top of hers. Too funny. She's got guts, that's for sure.

The drive home was uneventful. I really hated seeing the huge areas near Big Timber and Livingston that have been burned in the huge fire that's still raging. The air in the valley near Whitehall was entirely filled with smoke. We couldn't even see the mountain range that surrounds that area, it was so smoky. Fire scares me. We saw the campground/headquarters for the firefighters and it was crazy seeing this huge ridge on fire in the distance, and the helicopters flying over with little buckets of water that looked to be about the size of a thimble, and you wonder if that fire will ever end. Heaven knows we don't get enough rain here.

Back to the old grindstone!