Utah: my top favorite things about the Beehive State

Hi everyone, I just came back from visiting the state of Utah and I would like to discuss some of my favorite highlights from the trip, which I hope you will enjoy. 

We flew in on the fourth of July into Salt Lake City which was a fun time to enter into Utah, because they have some spectacular fireworks displays especially in the Utah Valley, which we had the privilege to drive out to see at the Cabela's in Lehi's parking lot, near Thanksgiving Point. We saw the displays from Thanksgiving Point, in towns in the Utah Valley even as far south as Provo from the parking lot. 

Before we did that, we started our trip eating lunch at the popular Red Iguana Mexican Restaurant, featured on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives, where I ate delicious fajitas and chips and salsa. (1)

After eating there, we headed to City Cakes (2), an amazing gluten free bakery where we got donuts, cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, cookies and my favorite, their cheesecake. They have two locations, one in Salt Lake City and one in Midvale, which we visited on the trip. 

In fact, as we were driving through Salt Lake City to head to the bakery was when I happened to see a row of trains on the railroad near the Rio Grande station. And I learned that one of those trains was the famous Big Boy No. 4014 train(3), which ran from December 1941 to December 1961 having traveled 1,031,205 miles in its 20 years in service. The train was reacquired in 2013 from the RailGiants Museum in Pomona, California and was restored and returned to service in May 2019 to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad’s Completion. The locomotives were 132 feet long and weighed 1.2 million pounds. They were articulated to allow them to negotiate curves with a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement, meaning they had four wheels on the leading set of “pilot” wheels guiding the engine, eight drivers, another set of eight drivers, and four wheels following supporting the rear of the locomotive. There are seven of them on public display in different cities in the country. St Louis, Missouri; Dallas, Texas; Omaha, Nebraska; Denver, Colorado; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and Cheyenne, Wyoming. That was an amazing surprise and a delight for railroad enthusiasts to look at. 

Since we were trying to escape the heat in California during that time, we decided to stay the week in Park City, Utah which is at 6,936 feet in elevation, which meant the temperatures were in the 70s and 80s most of the time. It got to 91 the day we left. But it was a very pleasant week in the weather and in the things we did there. 

We stayed in the condos at Kimball Junction (the big box chains and affordable area of Park City) in Newpark Town Center(4), in the shopping center with Best Buy which was fun to see and to walk around in being a main street and also being next to the Swaner Nature Preserve which protects beautiful marshland, creek, mountain views of the area, and wildlife including Sandhill Cranes. The area is one of the communities that would be considered a new urbanist community: https://www.cnu.org/resources/what-new-urbanism. With an environmentally conscious footprint with dense housing, businesses within walking distance from residences, and preserving nature in the plan. 

In Park City, we enjoyed visiting the Olympic Park(5), which was a venue for the bobsledding, luge, skeleton, and ski jumping events for the 2002 Winter Olympics which took place in the Salt Lake City area, and is where they have a fun Alpine slide, ziplines, ropes courses, and tubing which we all enjoyed doing and is a very unique place in our country, one of the only two Winter Olympic Games fun parks I know of, the other one being in the Lake Placid area. And is very unique in having mountain tubing in the summer at expert level. 

Park City is known for being a winter ski destination, but its summer activities as stated with the Olympics is still strong. The ski resorts when the snow leaves, are turned into mountain biking, hiking, and horseback riding areas. We took advantage of going horseback riding at the Deer Valley grounds(6) which provided some beautiful scenery walking in the forest and up mountains. The mountains have beautiful pine trees and aspen trees and green grass, a delightful surprise in the Western United States. 

And the area's mountains have amazing vistas, especially going south from Park City at Empire Pass and Guardsman Pass, climbing up the mountain to see views of the Park City area and also of the Heber Valley and being awarded with an area in the Great Basin that receives about 30 to 40 inches of precipitation, most of which is snow in the winter, which brings the Pacific Northwest to the Great Basin in someway. 

And Park City has the fun main street to walk around with fun retail shops and restaurants in historic buildings nestled in the mountains on an incline street. One of my personal favorite businesses to visit in Downtown is the Dolly's Bookstore(7), an independently owned bookstore with many different books, which I especially enjoy for their geography and traveling section. They have been in business since 1972 and is Park City's premiere and only bookstore. 

Outside of Park City, we visited Ogden, where we skydived for the first time at the IFLY(8) in Downtown Ogden which was an intense experience in a surprisingly underwhelming building. Being in 120 mile winds flying was really impressive being in a small space and honestly took my breath away for a minute. 

After going to IFLY, I decided to visit the Ogden location of EntertainMart(9), a store dedicated to selling used books, games, and their large music and movie section, which I heard about from research and knowing the store took over the former Hastings, a former music and movie chain which had large stores, I thought I could do some music and movie shopping at a brick and mortar establishment that I can't do as much elsewhere and it did not disappoint. 

In Heber City, we visited the local favorite Dairy Keen(10), where they have delicious burgers and fries and chili. And most of all, their atmosphere is fun having the train theme which includes a running model railroad track around the restaurant. 

Heading south from Salt Lake City, we started at the Lone Star Taqueria(11) which is another Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives restaurant, where I ate fish tacos and enjoyed seeing their fun eclectic restaurant decor representing a 50s restaurant. 

I hope you enjoyed reading my short story about our Utah trip and I hope it gave you some ideas for new vacation ideas and I hope you have good luck on the trips you plan to take. 

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.                                                John 3:16

Here are some links to the places I visited:

1. Red Iguana:https://www.rediguana.com/

2. City Cakes: https://www.citycakescafe.com/

3. Info on the Big Boy Train: https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/schedule/index.htm

4. Newpark Town Center: https://newparktowncenter.com/

5.Utah Olympic Park: https://utaholympiclegacy.org/location/utah-olympic-park/

6.Deer Valley Horseback Riding: https://www.deervalley.com/things-to-do/activities/horseback-riding

7. Dolly's Bookstore: https://www.dollysbookstore.com/

8. IFLY Ogden: https://iflyutah.com/

9. EntertainMart:https://entertainmart.com/

10. Dairy Keen: https://www.dairykeen.com/

11. Lone Star Taqueria: https://www.lstaq.com/

Thank you for reading and God bless!!