Kiwi Family Adventures

Day Four – Tuesday

Our first day in Salt Lake City and Mark had a golf tournament as part of his conference. The course, Promontory, I’m told by Mark was designed by Peter Dye who is apparently quite famous in golfing circles. Mark had a great time and had a good chat with Mike Bailey who is on the US Golf and Royal & Ancient Rules Committee – he assures me he didn’t advocate for too many changes.

While Mark played golf, we had a lazy morning and then we headed to the pool for a few hours to enjoy the sunshine.  The humidity is a lot lower here so even though it was about 35° it was actually quite pleasant.  We spent a few hours down by the pool until Master TJ decided he could not take any more (even though I let him sit in the cabana with his iPad) so we headed back to the room for a quick change and down to the ice-cream store in the hotel.

There was no way I was going to sit in the hotel all afternoon and the kids were keen to go to a park.  So I had a quick look on google and found a park a few blocks away which had a playground and my quick look had a review with someone saying the playground was good.  So off we went amongst a few grumbles about the walk.  As we got closer the area seemed to be getting a bit worse and there were a lot of people at the park.  I felt slightly more uncomfortable the closer we got to the playground and had just finished telling the kids they were to keep their shoes on at all times and noticed lots of adults hanging out on the playground.  I then saw someone sitting on the slide shooting up so quickly got the kids out of there.

They were very upset about missing out but a quick explanation made them happy enough to leave.  I subsequently discovered that this is a huge problem in Salt Lake and they have apparently cleaned that park up massively in the last year – I would seriously hate to have seen it a year ago. For a very religious city, there is very little compassion for the down and out and less fortunate. Mark was speaking with a couple of Mormon at the conference dinners and they said that as soon as you strayed (drugs or alcohol) you were gone – no one spoke to you anymore and your family cast you adrift … this is the accepted way apparently.

So I didn’t see much other choice than to head to the shops … I mean what else do you do!  We had a wander around and ended up at Johnnie Rockets (a burger bar) for dinner.  Time for a quick trip to the local supermarket and then home to bed.

Day Five – Wednesday

Mark had the morning off so another slow start before going to collect the rental car we had hired for the day.  As I was going to be driving out to the outlet mall later I had to do all the driving.  I’ve only ever driven on the right once before (normally Mark won’t let me and the only time previously was when he had laser surgery on his eyes so couldn’t drive) so it took a little getting used to but fortunately the roads in Salt Lake are reasonably wide.

We went into the city and checked out the Mormon Temple – quite beautiful and peaceful.

After, we had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory followed by some shopping for me (yay!!!) before dropping Mark back at the hotel for his meeting.

The kids and I then drove the 30 minutes or so up to towards Park City to the outlet mall. It was very quiet there so we whizzed around the shops and headed back to the hotel to drop all our bags off.

Mark was finished by this stage so we all headed to one of my fave places in the US, Whole Foods Market, for dinner and a few necessities.

We dropped the rental back and walked the block and a half home before eating our tubs of Ben & Jerry’s.  We were most disappointed to discover that Haagen Dazs no longer does their salted caramel ice-cream.

Day Six – Thursday

Mark had a full day at the conference today so the kids and I spent the entire day at the pool.  The kids made friends (after a little encouragement) with a young girl (Colette) from Florida and then entertained each other for hours.

Once back from the pool, we caught the tram into town to go to the grocery store for some dinner (vege sticks and ice-cream – seems healthy enough to me 😉 ).

Think it will be more of the same tomorrow.

Day Seven – Friday

More of the same today. Mark had a full day at the conference and the kids and I went to the pool. I’d forgotten goggles so the girls both conned me into a blingy pair from the hotel ?.

The kids’ friend was due back today and the constant question was “When’s Colette coming.” She eventually came down but only for an hour or so as they had decided to head home early as their home in Central Florida was in the path of Hurricane Irma.

Mark came down during his lunch break for a swim so that entertained them for a while.

As soon as Colette left they wanted to leave … so we headed for ice-cream (it’s becoming a theme on this trip). After, we went into town for dinner before heading back to the hotel so I could pack.

Mark had dinner at the Utah Natural History Museum on our last night in Salt Lake City, which was apparently very good.

Next Stop … Boston (home of the mighty Red Sox – that’s Mark’s contribution to the Blog) …