To lose, and find again.
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-11-13 11:23:26
This is a blog I drafted months ago and wanted to revise but I just now realize I have lost the details of this trip to my memory and I want to post it for L. So that's that.2:31 PM 8/3/2007Utah/Idaho/Wyoming. Day 1:Salt Lake City. Temple Square: Well before we talk about Temple Square let me talk about my flight from SFO to SLC lastnight! Firstly my ride from work to the airport cancelled in the morning and to my pleasant surprise two people volunteeredto take me to the airport:-) due to my crazy little friend at work whom I need to have lunch with before I leave mycurrent job to resume life in the east coast. I asked her for a ride but she was afraid to go to the airport (she livesabout 2 miles from it but she is too nervous to drive) so she made it her sweet mission to find someone who could/wouldtake me there which she promptly did. But even before that I dragged my bag from 220 Lombard to the Montgomery StreetBART station took the BART to Glen Park transferred to the shuttle took the shuttle to work then dragged the bag downabout a million steps to the building I work in overlooking SFO and the beatifuly Bay. So my friend dropped me off atSFO and I preceded to take my 1st JetBlue flight - JetBlue is currently at the International Terminal at SFO which ispretty nice. I had a beer and double-Jack at the bar to help me settle in for what I expected to be quite the turbulentflight which thankfully it wasnt. Anyway on board I was so surprised to have a lot of room for my legs. XM Satellite Radio,and 36 channles of cable TV - right in front of my (every seat has it). All of this for 138.80 (round trip from SFO toSLC). When I got to SLC I picked up the rental (260/week) drove to downtown Hilton (couldnt quite find it at first) thenwent in to see my little L. BUt my mind was so messed up because I thought I lost my cell phone that I am afraid I puther in a miserble state of mind mostly due to my selfishness. She told me everything was ok and we walked to a greatThai resteraunt eating the most fabulous soup a person can eat along with pad thai and another dish. It was a prettylate dinner so it was just the two of us and by the time dinner was over L and made me feel life was worth living again. And to top it off we went back to the garage under the Hilton containing our rental car and my sweet L (who just askedif she was in this blog entry) dialed my number and to our super pleasant surpirse we heard the vibrating from my cellphone. It was better than sex (well at least for that moment!). Anway back to Day 1 let us talk about the food. We ate leftover thai for breakfast. Then I went to the conference withL and we met J who is a recruiter for the company I will soon work for. Then we went to Temple Square for pictures and weenjoyed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. With L going back to the conference I went on my usual mission to find the Hard RockCafe which I did after about 1.5 hour walk and my sore feet and burning thirst. It was completely in the middle ofnowhere but I passed the beautiful city/county buildings on the way there which was a totally pleasant surprise. Anyway,back to the food. I met L back at the conference at 2 and went to PF Chang which she is crazy about and keeps insistingis 'real' chinese food the scary part is I'm even starting to believe her! We had scallops and Sea Bass and for somereason i drank a coke (actually 2 cokes). After that we drove to the biggest open pit mine in the world and thenon to the Great Salt (a disapoinment). We subsequently checked into our hotel (Quality Inn for $44 which i thought wasgood although the air conditioner wasnt really working). After that we went to the Market Street Grill which wasTOTALLY FABULOUS! Ummmmmm.... Ahi Tuna crab louie salad the most delicious little crab cakes you can imagine toppedoff by us sharing 2 scoops of haagen daaz vanilla ice cream filled with delicious fruit such as blueberries raspberries,and strawberries.... Oh what a way to leave the Great Salt Lake!Utah/Idaho/Wyoming. Day 3:Well not really 'officially' Idaho but we drove through on I-15 North yesterday for several hours and it was beautiful soI'm counting it. We are sitting at the Signal Mountain Lodge in Wyoming each one of us on our computers me writing myblog and her working (yes on vacation:-(). We spent the night last night in a beautiful lodge her sleeping by the fireplaceand me sitting outside smoking a cigar reflecting on the past and looking to the future a future that brings me backto the east coast away from the beatuiful memory that is San Francisco. CA magnet to so many things that are beautifulin this world liberalism creativity natural beauty and most importantly a sense of place a sense of time a senseof purpose. My time in North Beach and working in South City will not soon be dimmed. But back to the present we areoverlooking the beautiful Jackson Lake where we will hopefully kayak in the afternoon ($13.50 / hour) on that gorgeouspiece of water. Utah/Idaho/Wyoming. Day 4:This morning we woke up ate some polish sausages for breakfast and headed for Old Faithful and later to our Fairy Fallshike and Midway Geiser Basin home of the largest and seemingly most spectacular geyser in Yellowstone. Old Faithfulerupted not even 1 minute afer we arrived to it which was awesome because it wasnt expected to erupt for another 1:15hours. We took our customary pictures and video and it was awe-inspring - to say the least. Yellowtone is quite possiblythe most spectacular National Park we have been to (we were debating between Yellowstone and Grand Canyon). Well the daystarted out gorgeous enough with lots of sunshine and little wind so it made our 2.6 mile hike out to Fairy Falls quite spectacular. Weeven broke out the telephone lens to shoot some wildlife such as a raccoon crow and some herd of mule deer way offin the distance. However after Fairy Falls we decided to head furhter on the trail out into a meadow... Well afterwe got out there we felt some wind and the sky behind us had clouded over quite rapidly not to mention we heard thedistant sound of thunder as well. As we had hiked about 1.5 miles further from Fairy Falls we headed back there. Thatwas when all hell broke loose with gusty winds that just about bowled us over and dead trees falling over all around us,in front of and behind us! We were running wiht out camera the tripod and a backpack but we were looking up all thetime to make sure a tree would not land on us. Luckily we were always a little ahead of the storm but another couplewe met on the trail decided to keep going into the meadow (we later found their parents in our parking lot and went lookingfor them but to our surprise they had been found and returned to their parents the parents were concerned because thekids had the keys to the car!!). At any rate we were very lucky to be alive by the time we got back to the parking lot,and we felt really good about the hike. Then we went on to Midway Geyser Basin which is not describable in words (similarto Old Faithful in magesty but not really geology). Walking around the geyser was like being in a sauna at times and whenyou emerged from the steam it was freezing! From there we did the loop around Yellowstone and saw spectacular herds ofbison and more mule deer the drive itself was also gorgeous and relaxing after our near-death experience. Utah/Idaho/Wyoming. Day 5:We went to bed last night after enjoying the most spectacular vision of starry skies imagineable being able to see whatfelt like every single start in the moonless night sky. It was quite cold last night but due to the lesson we learnedthe night before (about wearing more clothes not about getting the extra sleeping bag because at that time it was outof our control - at least until we can get back to the North Face in Berkeley). And we were again full of polish sausagesdue to our famine state after walking/running out of our near-death experience in the meadows! Well back to the day athand. I started a fire well actually i failed to start the fire because i used too much cardboard and a very nice guystopped by and gave us newspaper and kindling which Lei and I used to jump start our fire. After that we set up our poortripod that is too tired to work anymore (we propped it up wiht a pine cone!) and took some pictures sitting on the picnictable by the fire our new mugs (a pure copper mug and an impressive $20 yellowstone mug) and some kissing picture onthe picnic table. After that we drove on to Cody. Wy prior home to Buffalo Bill Cody. The state park named after him isquite beautiful as well. In Cody we ate at Buffalo Bill's former hotel the Irma (I had fresh trout and she had a buffalosteak that was pretty good) and we went to the Wild West/Rodeo show which was good but not something either one of uswould be eager to do again. We did see a cowboy bounce off his head and had to be carried off which was disturbing. Weare staying at the SouthFork Bed and Breakfast which a couple from Minnesota set up about 1.5 years ago. He had beena cook in Minnesota for about 30 years prior to moving out here. He was telling us a little bit about the area and the house(he has 12 mostly rescued horses) the house is 8000 square feet there were wind gusts up to 137 mph last year (therewere at least 2 rounds of thunderstorms since we arrived at about 2 today) and the owner before them had put about700k into renovations on the house. The house is ok but I don't feel it has a lot of personality. For a Bed and Breakfastit seems a little too big for my liking although amiable enough.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://todd-the-case.blogspot.com/2007/09/to-lose-and-find-again.html
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