Day 2: Park City and a Need for Speed

The most common follow-up question people asked when we told them we were flying to Utah for Spring Break was whether we ski. Alas, Dear Husband and I have gone a handful of times each in our lives, most recently at Seven Springs in the Laurel Highlands, PA. That day ended with near catastrophe, and since we both value having intact knee ligaments, we have decided not to ski again. However, my research uncovered a unique experience of speed on ice that would be easier on our joints: a bobsled ride!

In 2002 Salt Lake City and Park City hosted the Winter Olympics, and they will do so again in 2034. Utah Olympic Park in Park City now has two small museums and both free and paid outdoor activities year-round.

The Alf Engen Ski Museum on the first floor requires some patience to get into, because many of the initial displays feel very "insider"--a who's-who of famous skiers, trainers, and organizers unknown to non-skiers. However, the Barbara Alley Simon Collection of ski fashions over the decades was eye-catching; check out the brown ski outfit from the 1930s above right with a bare midriff (?!). It is next to what look like ski-scrubs, while the two on the upper left date from the 1980s, natch.

The museum is named for a Norwegian-American who immigrated to the United States in 1929 and is famous for ski jumping (below) and for setting up skiing areas around the US West. Other displays explain how Utah's "greatest snow on earth" is attributable to a deeper layer of heavy, wet snow made at warmer temps followed by lighter snow created at colder temps. As the climate warms, less of this famous powder will fall on top.

Park City's silver and other ore mines attracted Norwegian workers, who used to go about on "miner flip-flops"--simple skis 14-16' long. They would entertain each other with ski jumping. The mining dried up early in the 1900s, and commercial skiing took off in the 1960s. Snowboarding was invented in the 1980s and was initially banned at some resorts due to the young rowdies.

Upstairs is the Eccles Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Winter Games Museum, which has artefacts and photographs. Below left is a puppet buffalo head and below right is a Child of the Light costume, both from the opening ceremonies.

Below left is one of Bode Miller's skiing costumes; below right is a signed buffalo sculpture.

We also watched a video about the extensive process of designing and manufacturing the Olympic medals (O.C. Tanner). The exhibit closed with a wall display of some of the hundreds of pins that attendees collected and swapped with each other.

It took 30-40 minutes to see each of the "museums," so after we checked in for our bobsled ride, we still had half an hour to wait for our orientation to the bobsled ride. We sat in the theater to watch the Para-Olympics medal ceremony live stream; among other things, we learned how people with low vision ski with sighted guides.

After promising that we did not have musculoskeletal or medical problems and weren't pregnant, we were divvied up into sleds of 3 guests + 1 driver. A shuttle bus ferried us up the hill to the foot of the track, where we got another orientation and were fitted with balaclavas and helmets. Otherwise, we could wear whatever we wanted as long as we finished the outfit with closed-toed shoes. I had brought our snow pants in case we wanted a wind-break layer, but the temps were warm enough that we didn't use them. Each sled team was loaded into a truck with the bobsled and carried to the put-in point (star on the left).

For safety reasons, guests don't do a running start. Instead, we loaded into the sled from tallest to shortest, except the pilot, who sits before the second person. Then the crew pushed us down a ramp!

The video (from their livestream on YouTube) should start at minute 23, and we're done by minute 28. It was a bumpy, uncomfortable ride--I can't imagine doing it 1/4 of the distance longer and 30 miles per hour faster like the pros do--but I'm glad we did it! We reached speeds over 60 miles per hour and 3-4 Gs on the turns.

Afterwards we drove into Park City for a nice dinner at Kaneo and then patronized a woman-owned souvenir shop before driving home under the direction of the Star Trek Voyager Doctor (Robert Picardo), whose voice is now available on Waze. The temperature was dropping, but I wrapped up in a comforter to watch the sun set over the mountains.

Did you miss our visit to downtown Salt Lake City on Day 1? Up next: real and historical adventures on Day 3.

Day 1: Organ Recital and Capitol Building in downtown Salt Lake City

Dear Husband dislikes the cold and grey of January and February, so we try to get out of town to somewhere warmer, like Tampa (twice!), Phoenix (also twice!) or Santa Monica. With my academic schedule and Ash Wednesday, we often can't get away until March. This year I asked him to let me change things up by flying out to Salt Lake City to visit a friend from residency and get a little extended wintertime with two nights in Park City, which helped SLC host the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. When our direct Delta flight landed Sunday night, we picked up our white Jeep rental car and bunked down with our friends and their two cats.

After a chill Monday morning, our sightseeing itinerary started with a organ recital at the Mormon Tabernacle. These are held daily at noon (or 2pm on Sundays) for free by a different organist. We heard a "Fanfare" by William Mathias [unknown relation], Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Major, and a "Méditation" by Maurice Duruflé. Every program is different except for variations on the Mormon pioneer hymn "Come, Come, Ye Saints" and "an old melody" of the organist's choosing, in this case "Fairest Lord Jesus." Brian Mathias ended today's with another French piece, Eugène Gigout's "Grand chœur dialogué."

The day had its share of frustrations, like navigating the parking around the street construction and the Temple Square around its construction. Despite a delicious lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant, we had given up on catching the city bus up the hill to tour the state capitol building, when I heard the familiar sound of air brakes and a wheelchair ramp unfolding. So we turned around to find the right bus at the stop we had just left--AND it was free, because downtown Salt Lake City is a fare-free zone.

At the Capitol, we skimmed the historical exhibit and watched the short video about the monuments on the grounds. There are quite a few, from a copy of Cyrus Dallin's statue of Massasoit (Ousamequin, c. 1581-1661, Pokanoket); a statue of early Mormon female physician Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon (1857-1932); and four marble lions named Fortitude, Honor, Integrity, and Patience. Beehive imagery abounds, from sculptures outside to hexagonal tiling to the bars on the elevators. The first petition to create a state in the area--which was so large it would have included parts of six current states--called it the "State of Deseret," for the word for "honeybee" used in the Book of Mormon. They valued the importance of hard work and community, and "Industry" has been the state's motto since 1959.

The three-story rotunda is beautiful, with murals that were added after a restoration two decades ago.

This is us on the fourth floor where the skylights let in the sunshine. To the left is the staircase from the Supreme Court on the third floor to the main second floor. Not pictured: the bride and groom who were doing their "first look" (caught on film) or the quinceañera having photos taken in the largest pale green, bedazzled, hooped ballgown I have ever seen. Utahns take the moniker "the people's house" seriously, so the docent told us such scenes are common, especially when the Japanese cherry trees bloom for about three weeks later in the spring.

We also learned that the state bird is the California gull because of "the miracle of the gulls"; in 1848 a bunch of them ate the grasshoppers and locusts that were decimating the Mormon's second crop. Some 5th graders petitioned to change the state tree from the blue spruce (rare in these parts) to the more abundant quaking aspen. And the state flag was changed in 2024 from a complicated seal on a royal blue background to something simpler that she doesn't like as much as the one depicted in embroidery here, with its eagle, six arrowheads for the six tribes that occupied the land when the first band of 150 Mormons arrived in 1847 under the leadership of Brigham Young: the Paiute, Shoshone, Goshute, Navajo, and the Utes. Either two arrows are for the Utes, who split into two bands at one point, or the sixth arrow is for the settlers.

Sumptuous Gold Room that the Executive Branch uses for official matters, with furnishings from around the world.

Then it was time to hop back in our Jeep and take Route 80 through Parleys Canyon into the Wasatch Mountains. At Kimball Junction we got off and took winding and/or dirt roads up, up, up to Silver Summit, at an altitude of 8,000 feet. I had found us an AirBnB on the second floor of a guy's garage "barn." The windows on all four sides look out onto gorgeous scenery, and as you can see, there was still a little snow! Dinner was excellent food in a casual atmosphere at Twisted Fern, one Park City's fine dining eateries.

Up next: Utah Olympic Park!

Even more anatomical art!

We'll get to the anatomical art, but first I want to show you an upcycling collage I made. The oilcloth mural above used to hang in the gathering room of the church where Dear Husband and I now attend. After decades and decades with pride of place after having been donated by a parishioner, it suffered water damage during renovations, not to mention looking dated. On top of that, it depicts Saint George slaying a dragon for Mary, Queen of Scots, an allegory for Catholicism defeating Protestantism. So, yeah, maybe no longer something to have in the living room of a Presbyterian church.

The mural was removed and cut into pieces if congregants wanted to keep a memento. DH wanted the dragon, but someone else had snagged it, so he picked up the queen, which we loaded into the car with some difficulty on a windy Sunday after church. He wanted display her on his office wall, so I found a 3' x 4' frame online and invested in some supplies (black paint, silk roses, flower beads, old jewelry I no longer wear).

Then the person with the knight and dragon decided she didn't have a place for it and gifted it to DH. So I purchased another frame. When both had arrived, my Awesome Parents helped me prep and frame them. I then added the three-dimensional flourishes on the acrylic cover, so as not to damage the original mural.

They are so large that with the decorations, we could only fit one into his car at a time, so I will update this post once the second one makes it to the church and the building staff are able to hang them high on the wall above the couch in DH's office.

 

UPDATE: The Knight and Queen have been hung! In Dear Husband's office, that is. Sorry that the light isn't better.

Now to the anatomical art. I am slowly accumulating a collection from cross-stitch to collages to the piece d'resistance, a quilled paper skull and brain. Over the holidays I saw a social media post about the multi-media artwork of Emma Pannell, who uses upcycled materials in her embroidery and beading. I just loved this turquoise-colored hand with its copper wire and stones, so I treated myself to a print and a frame to match the ones above. Since she works in Great Britain, I had to pay a tariff and cut down the A4 size to fit my American frame, but it adds such a pop of color (especially since I left room on the wall for two other pieces I have been watching on Etsy, and they tend more to a brown palette). Now DH and I will have art in our offices in different parts of the city but in the same frame.

The second new piece was a surprise from friend J.R., who made a pair of sooty yet sparkly lungs out of resin and gifted it to me while we were in Tennessee. It reminded me of the antique medical dictionary a colleague had gifted me back in residency, Robley Dunglison's Medical Lexicon (1854). That led to a project on the history of Black Lung combined with a lesson on racial and cognitive bias in clinical reasoning that I have presented locally a few times.

While the semi-circular cut outs on either side fittingly made it look like an ashtray when flat, I don't have a lot of horizontal space on which to display it, and I thought I would get to enjoy the piece more if I hung it on the wall. In my stash of frames from the Goodwill store, I found a white, square one that wasn't quite deep enough to encase the lungs. After a moment's hesitation, I decided to cut out the "melanosis" and "pulmonary" pages from the dictionary as a background. Then I mounted the lungs on the glass to create a sort of shadow-box effect.

Besides the fact that I decoupaged the pages 90-degrees off from the original hanger and had to affix a new one on the back, I'm really pleased with how it turned out: old and new, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, in a spot where I will always see it from my desk.