Written by Mike
When I thought about picking my son up from his freshman year of college, I wasn’t expecting it to be under such circumstances. It started out early in the morning in a trendy Uber from Colorado Springs to the Denver airport. It was cold and snowing. The airport was empty, even though it was the middle of a business day. I was the only person in line in security. There was hardly anyone in the airport. The flight from Denver to Salt Lake had about 20 people on it, so we spread out and had multiple rows to ourselves. Interestingly, the Salt Lake airport had quite a few people in it mulling about. I guess Utah got the memo about the Coronavirus a little after the rest of the West. Even so, it was still pretty vacant. The rental car guy was pretty excited when I showed up as I think I was one of the few people renting a car that day. It was a brand-new minivan, which turned out to be perfect. I left the airport and headed to Rexburg. The weather was warmer than in Colorado, so there was no snow on the roads. I got to Rexburg and Andrew was mostly ready to go. We finished packing a few things, and then loaded up the minivan with all his stuff. We cleaned his apartment and then headed out on the town. We went to Gaitor Jacks, which is a really good sandwich shop by his apartment and then he showed me around BYU-I. It was a lot bigger and nicer than I realized when we were there last time. It was fun to see where he would hang out, study, and chill. It was really sad to see it, though, knowing that he was getting shortchanged on his freshman year experience at college. I think that Andrew’s second semester was really good for him. He found his place, found some friends, and was heading in a good direction. It was sad to see it cut short. After that, we headed back down to Provo. We stopped in Ogden to get some food and made it pretty easily down to Orem. Once there, we unpacked some of his stuff into Sara’s parent’s condo, then went to sleep. It was a long day. On Saturday, we got up, washed clothes, bedding, and went to Costco and then Target to get some bins to pack everything neatly in the basement closet. Andrew got his hair cut (way short) and then we cleaned the condo and decided to head out early toward home, so we didn’t have to drive all day on Sunday. We drove to Grand Junction and got Buffalo Wild Wings, checked into the hotel, and watched movies. It was the prototypical guy road trip. Sunday, we got up early and headed toward home. When we got to Vail, it started snowing like crazy. There were people sliding off the highway and I was sure we were going to get stuck. The rental van had two-wheel drive only and it was struggling and overheating all the way up the pass. When we got to Frisco, there was about 1 foot of snow on the ground and it was snowing heavily. I didn’t think we would make it up the pass to the Eisenhower tunnel, so I refiled the radiator fluid, said a prayer, and we headed out. Turns out, when we got to Dillon, there was no snow and the rest of the drive home was easy. It was a whirlwind trip with Andrew, but a lot of fun. We had no idea that the Coronavirus storm was just starting.
Written by Mike We got up early and headed up to Grand Targhee Ski Resort to go skiing today. It only took 70 minutes to get there and there was no traffic whatsoever. The drive was also pretty spectacular, and we were in awe seeing the amazing Tetons. When we got there, I walked in and got my rental boots and demo skis and we headed to get our lift tickets. With the military discount they were only $45 a person. What a steal! We grabbed some snacks and water and shoved them into Andrew’s ski pack and headed up the Dreamcatcher lift so that we could head down the runs under the Blackfoot lift. One of the guys at the ski rental place mentioned that there were some great runs over that way. Well, that guy was so wrong. Maybe on a powder day those runs are great, but they were mostly icy when we went down them. We canned skiing on this side of the mountain and headed back over to Dreamcatcher and then skied down the other side of the resort until we made our way over to the Sacajawea lift. This side of the mountain was definitely where the adventure was to be had. There were a few runs that were powderier than others and overall, we had a great time skiing down the Snowdancer run and the Medicine Bowl run. With a little more powder, we would've skied down some of the black tree runs but there just wasn't enough snow for me to feel comfortable doing that, so we skied mostly blue runs. After eating lunch at the bottom, I swapped out my LINE demo skis for some VOLKL skis. I did not like the LINE skis at all. They were much too light for me. I had way more fun skiing after lunch on a better pair of skis. We skied pretty much until the lifts were almost closed. Then it was back in the car for a pretty easy drive back to Rexburg. I dropped Andrew off back at his apartment and then headed back to the hotel to shower and rest. We met up later at Da Pineapple Grill for some pretty tasty Hawaiian food. |
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