Skiing in Mormon Country

VIDEO ON THE LEFT - SKIM OR SWIM AT THE CANYONS



After 4 days of sight seeing i landed in Park City Utah, home of the Sundance film festival and close to the site of the 2002 winter olympic games. I was catching up with Sandy, a mate of mine from uni who i hadn't seen for about 3.5 years as we'd both been travelling in different places at different times - although we worked out that at one stage we were in the same part of Portugal at the same time, which is fairly typical of my organisational skills.

I planned on spending 3 nights up there and ended staying for about 12. Most of the time was spent in one of the following activities - skiing, poker or drinking. One of the boys convinced us to go and play in a poker tournament at a town called Wendover, which i was told was about 1.5 - 2 hours away. What they didn't tell me was this was at an average speed of about 90mph, so i didn't bother filling up before we left. About 65 miles out the fuel light came on, and as we were were driving across the salt flats in the middle of nowhere, there was no servo's until we got to town. Ended up slipstreaming a truck for about 40 miles and limped in to the petrol station.

To get to Wendover you have to leave Utah and cross over in to Nevada, as gambling is illegal in Utah. About 100m over the border is a mini vegas catering for all those mormons with secret gambling addictions. None of us did any good in the tournament but we made the most of the free drinks and left for home about 3 in the morning.

After a relaxing week and a half i headed back to Phoenix, stopping over night in a great little town called Page. The next morning i left from Page to visit the Grand Canyon. This was by far the worst weather i'd had in the 6 weeks i'd been here. There was a little bit of snow combined with winds gusting up to 80kph. It meant that you couldn't stand and admire the amazing views for very long. You basically jumped out, fired off a couple of pic's with the camera then jumped straight back in to your car. And my timing was excellent - i arrived the day before the opening of the glass bottom walkway that loops out over the canyon. Couldn't have planned it any better.

After 2.5 weeks on the road it was good to be back in Phoenix - if only because it meant i was 2.5 weeks closer to cruising the Caribbean in luxury. Also means i'll finally be able to watch some cricket - am yet to see a game. The U.S is not a good place to be a cricket fan. I've got about another week before i head over to Miami, and i'll post one more update before i go.

Hope everyone is well, send me some emails about what you've all been up to. If any one has an email address for Dougy could they send it to me. Thanks

Hope everyone is well.

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Videos from "Skiing in Mormon Country":

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