Utah-The One That Got Away (#29)

I have had the pleasure of visiting Utah a half a dozen times or more. In fact Utah is admittedly one of my favorite places to visit with all its National Parks, wild landscapes and blue, blue skies. This last time though, I was visiting the Capital to make it permanent.

Shortly after grad school I found myself in Salt Lake City, one of three final candidates for a SHPO position. The reviewer position was based in downtown Salt Lake City and located in the old and beautifully refurbished Rio Grande train station. The state arranged for me to have two nights and three full days for the interview process and to check out possible housing if indeed I became the preferred candidate.

Before I left Michigan I contacted one of our grad school alums in Salt Lake and asked about living there and areas I might want to live in with my family. I arrived early one morning, grabbed my rental car and headed to "catch" my interview at the train station. My interview was held in a board room with approximately ten people in attendance. By midafternoon it was over and I was on my way to the hotel. Tomorrow would be my day to explore the city and possible neighborhoods to transplant my family.

Late the next morning I headed over to Memorial
Hall- Home of the Utah Heritage Foundation to meet one of our fellow EMU alums. It was April and the city was blanketed in a thick lush carpet of glorious bloom. Kirk and I had lunch at Red Rock Brewing Company; the only one in Salt Lake City, where we had a tasty lunch and pint. Kirk had some wonderful insight to the city and after our lunch we parted company so I could explore the city.

I drove north of the city center checking out potential neighborhoods stopping at the State Capital for some wonderful views of the city below. Then it was back to city center to check out a few more potential neighborhoods before exploring the downtown area using a wonderful Historic Downtown Walking Tour map I found on line. The downtown has an astonishing amount of historic buildings-many creatively refurbished-like the Union Pacific Train Station that was converted to a shopping and entertainment complex. It is a great city to explore by foot and when you tire of walking, the light rail system will get you back to your car (free when I visited in 2004).

It was my last day in Salt Lake City and I had still had two very
important places to explore before I returned to Michigan. I left my hotel at the crack of dawn to visit Temple Square and the LDS Library-home of probably the best genealogical libraries in the US.

Last stop-Park City and the place my family would live, should this interview become a reality. Salt Lake City rests in a valley along the western side of the Wasatch Mountains, home to some of the best downhill skiing in the US. The alpine environment Park City offered was the place. I imagined days where the boys would walk in with their snowboards, and the apres ski life for Phil and me. Needless to say, I was sold on Utah. Unfortunately a few days later I was snapped back to reality. the position was awarded to one of the other two candidates. Little did I realize, but a short year and a half later I would be working another kind of Rio Grande in Austin, Tx...overseeing the districts along the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande River.

Oklahoma is Better Than OK (#35)

Phil and I recently headed 5 hours north of Austin to Ardmore, Oklahoma to attend the Movies at Murray Letterboxing Event April 4th & 5th. The event was wonderfully organized by Penguin Patrol where she hid more than 50 movie-themed letterboxes in and around the beautiful Lake Murray State Park.

Lake Murray is Oklahoma's oldest and largest state park. Developed with the help of Roosevelt's WPA program in the 1930s. The park displays an abundance of reminders of the era of time intensive masonry techniques in its rustic stone building such as the Tucker Tower Nature Center on the east side of the manmade lake.

We camped at the end of the peninsula at Buzzard's Roost
the first night awakening to the sound of Canadian Geese. Before the event started at 10:30am we decided to hike a couple of the trails that held the dozen and a half temporary boxes, which took a lot longer than we anticipated. These boxes proved to be some of the most intricate of all and well worth the extra time we took to locate them. We joined what part of the group remained, enjoyed talking with old and new friends, did some exchanges and ate pizza before heading out to grab up more! We hiked five or six hours this day for my best one day total of 28 boxes!

The wind out at the end of the point got the best of us Friday night, so on Saturday we moved inland. The wind did indeed settle down and we slept very comfortably in our outfitted minivan only to wake up Sunday morning and discover it was 40º with the returned wind chill. We dressed without haste, ate a modified breakfast and quickly broke camp. The cold did not deter us from one last trail that proved to be the prettiest of all the hikes we had taken in and around the park.

The trail was located before the entry booth for Tipps Point. We parked on the north side of the road by the speed limit sign. The entrance is not easily seen but we entered the trail at a post with a hiking symbol. We continued due north, ignoring a few intersections until we headed down a fairly rocky hill where we veered left along an incredible inlet complete with a kingfisher hunting for a meal. We hiked to a super comfortable bench next to a bridge built by an Eagle Scout candidate and wished we would have planned this spot for a picnic, but time was fleeting and we needed to head south for Austin.

We pulled out onto I-35 and headed south, but there was
one more stop before the border for Phil...The Winstar Casino!! The slots where calling his name. While I prepared us a lunch in the parking lot and plotted our stop in Fort Worth, Phil had one glorious hour with the one armed bandit...After 50 minutes Phil came out with a big smile on his face and an extra $20 in his pocket. What better way to wrapup our Oklahoma adventure!