Camp Cloud Rim - Girl Scout camp

The reason we made the trip to Utah was to take Delaney to girl scout camp.  One of my best memories growing up was getting to go to Cloud Rim camp as a girl scout and I wanted Delaney to experience this mountain camp as well (no camps like this is Kansas!)

The lodge was "new" (to me).  Built in 2000.

They still have platform tents, but Delaney's group got to sleep in a 'no frills' cabin.  This building was actually one of the shower houses when I was at camp...

Provo Canyon and Park City

After visiting my old haunts in Orem, we drove up Provo Canyon to Bridal Veil falls and had a picnic lunch.  I remember driving this canyon as a kid before it was widened to four lanes.  We would get stuck behind stinky slow moving traffic and my dad would try to get around the traffic, with my mom saying "Slow down!"  The ride someone seemed much longer as a kid that it was as an adult.

Going up to the Alpine slide in Park City

He looks fast, but I beat him down the mountain!

Park City

Childhood memories

It was very strange to see the places where I grew up.  Of course the mountains had not changed at all, and some things had changed a lot (ie all of the orchards that surrounded my dead end street were cut down and replaced with houses).  What was surprising is that  some of the special places that I remembered were still there and recognizable.

Deer Creek Reservoir and Mt Timpanogos.  The new thing was that a whole new reservoir had been built on the river above this one that was just a valley with farms in it 30 years ago.

 Welcome to the city of Orem.

The view of Mt Timpanogos from my old house. Beautiful!

 My old house - easy to find because I still remembered the address (when this is drilled into kids in 1st grade, it apparently sticks for life), and the city is laid out on a grid system N, S, E, W.

 The old movie theatre I used to ride my bike to.  This is where I first saw the original Stars Wars movie!

 The Pavillon in Scera park.  Still looks the same, perhaps with new toilet facilities.  I celebrated many friends' birthdays here, and had my first job selling shaved ice from a portable trailer in the parking lot here (next to the pool).

 We visited the church where I grew up, Orem Community Church.  I truly didn't expect to find anyone there that I knew growing up, but did meet the parents of one childhood friend.  This banner particularly surprised me.  I actually helped make this with my mom (probably for vacation bible school or something).  The yellow handprint below my hand is mine.  Crazy that this happened to be hanging up in worship that day.

 The church is very small, but they have a large community garden that they use to provide fresh produce to the local food pantry.  A meaningful ministry. 

 Another lady at the worship service told me she remembered my parents and reminded me that the pew cushions that we were sitting on were donated by them (yes, 30 yr old cushions, probably time for some new ones).  The building itself looked the same.  Kind of crazy after all these years.

The "Heber House" - a second home in the mountains.  We stopped by here and met the current owner.  He said rumor had it that the house was originally build by a doctor as a ski cabin.  I confirmed the built by a doctor, but said is was more of a money pit.  I had a great childhood sledding down the hill and hiking the high hill behind us, but dad spent a lot of his time just fixing up the place and doing maintenance.  It was fun talking to the owner who had done a lot of improvements (he had lived there 23 years himself).

View of the valley and Timpanogos from the Heber House.

Summer visit to Utah

Got to return to the places where I grew up for the first time in 30 years.  Fun walking down memory lane for a few days and hiking in the beautiful mountains.  The trip began with a long drive across the farmlands of Kansas and western Colorado, followed by the pretty flat and boring interstate through southern Wyoming, eventually getting us into Utah near Park City.

Spent the night in Burlington CO.  They have a brand new city park with lots of rocket themed play equipment.

Swimming

We couldn't end the trip without a dip in the beautiful pool at the hotel. It was a good end to a hot and tiring day.  I enjoyed reading by the pool while Delaney played around with some other kids there.

Smithsonian - Art

On our last day, the boys headed out to the Udvar Hazy complex on the edge of town to see the latest additions to the Air and Space museum.  I'm glad Delaney and I didn't join them...the trip ended up taking 1 1/2 one way thanks to some poor signage.  

Delaney and I chose to go to the Art Museum.  We spent several hours wandering the picture galleries and then realized as we were starting to get hungry that the sculptures (my favorites) were downstairs.  At this point Delaney was ready to drag me out so we could got to the fountain again and it our lunches...oh well.

Delaney and I had a good time comparing notes on how Mary and Jesus were portrayed by different artists.

Wish we could have spent more time in the sculpture sections.

Bike tour of monuments at night!

This was my favorite activity of the whole trip, even though it ended up raining on us in the end.

Jefferson is 19 ft tall, just 6 inches shorter than the Statue of Freedom on the Capitol building.

Clouds gathering (preparing to rain on us later)

The FDR memorial was my favorite.  It had four "rooms" /sections to it for each of his terms.  There are cascading water features throughout and beautiful lifelike bronze statues.

FDR memorial

FDR went to great pains to hide his disability and the fact that he was in a wheelchair.  This sculpture was added relatively recently (2001) (and he would likely not approve).  One of the other large sculpture shows him in a large chair.  The sculptor put very tiny (out of proportion) wheels on it.

Delaney listening to a Fireside chat with the statue.

 MLK memorial.  It started raining fully on us at this point in the tour.  We were afraid they were going to call it off because of lightning, but the storm called down and we continued on.

View of the Jefferson Memorial across the basin.

MLK - sculpted by a Chinese artist.

Korean War memorial - 19 stainless steel statues, 14 army, 3 marine, 1 navy and 1 air force.   In the reflective wall there appear to be 38 soliders - symbolic of the 38th parallel and the 38 months of war.

Reflective Wall - laser engraved with images of over 2000 images, all combined they create a mountain landscape as a backdrop to the memorial.

Lincoln Memorial.  We got to stand on the spot where MLK made his I have a Dream speech.

Can you find the engraving mistake that was corrected?  "F"uture was originally "E"uture.  Part of the stone was filed away to make it less visible.

Vietnam memorial sculpture

Sculpture for the nurses who served in Vietnam.  (Modeled after the Pieta by Michangelo)

WWII Memorial.  There is a pillar for every state and territory.  4000 gold stars, one for every 100 soldiers lost.

An obelisk is 10x as tall as it is wide.  Washington Monument is 55 x 550 ft.