Park City, Salt Lake, and Sundance–A Girls Getaway

Nice to see Ute!

What do you get when you take three friends who've known eachother since elementary school, an indy film festival, and an incoming snow storm? An epic girls weekend!

Come join as I recant our amazing weekend in Salt Lake City Utah filled with trips to the salt flats, the Sundance Film Festival, and an epic day of skiing (and an okay attempt at snowboarding) at Snowbasin!

The Play by Play

Day 1:

• Following a brief solo overnight in Portland, I geared up to take flight to Salt Lake City Utah. Upon reaching my gate I enjoyed a long phone call with Baylee as she started her drive from Reno, NV. After a short two hour flight I had made it to Salt Lake. With Baylee on the way and Kate at work, I picked up some food and headed to baggage claim to pick up my duffel. I had a short wait as Baylee crossed the state to pick me up from the SLC Airport and upon her arrival we headed right back in the direction she had just came from to go and check out the Salt Flats!

• We came to find that the Salt Flats only got more beautiful the further you walked out to go explore them. Transforming from solid white to gorgeous raised cracks with mountainous backgrounds. We found the scenic mountains perfect for a photo op and it only got more beautiful after sunset.

• Driving to meet Kate at the restaurant Baylee and I begin our journey of singing at the top of our lungs while absolutely HAULING down the highway! We are already late but this is no time to be UN-fashionably late–thus Baylee begins her brand new Utah career stripping in the street as she casually puts on a cuter dinner outfit.

  • "Can you hold my underwear" the absolute ICON says to me as she is diverting traffic with her fashion fiasco. Yes. I absolutely can.

• I begin our HUSTLE to the restaurant with a neon orange flag to let everyone know in Utah that we ARE late and we ARE crossing. NOW. I added a few leaps and flag work to thank the oncoming traffic for keeping us in the present tense rather than as roadkill.

• We go in to greet the most beautiful Kate and begin our orders shortly thereafter. Following a yummy meal Kate and I launch our secret plan and embark on the worlds hardest mission–distract Baylee. Previously, Kate and I had planned to surprise Baylee by saying it was her birthday! I even got her a sash! Kate called ahead and went to tell our waiter that it was Baylee's birthday.

  • The waiter comes and brings some spoons for Baylee's birthday dessert. Baylee is NOT following along. After our waiter sets down some spoons Baylee spurts "What are you doing?" He tells her that he is preparing to bring her a birthday dessert. "Is that what she told you?" Baylee says.

  • "SHE'S A LITTLE LIAR" Baylee spurts.

  • The man was too stunned to speak.

  • He eventually leans over and whispers "Your friends are trying to do something nice for you, go along with it"

• Our evening excursions are coming to an end when Baylee excitedly states that some of her college lacrosse teammates are HERE and they're practically ACROSS THE STREET! I mean, how could we not go see them. Right? Kate and I embark to mingle with total strangers and the excitement clearly is FLOODING Baylee's body as we enter the building. After a round of drinks Kate and I have mentally checked ourselves into warm beds for the evening–sleeping masks included. We split from Baylee and her friends and leave them to hit the town as we aim to hit the hay.

• Oh and apparently Kate's drink from dinner tastes like throat spray. Yikes. I thought it tasted like a leatherworking store with an old cobbler inside. Kate liked it though, which is good.

  Day 2: Do you SKI me?

• Up and at 'em...at least Kate was. She had work to get to. I was praying that Baylee's late night excursion would put her into a deep slumber–nope. She shoots up and is ready-to-get-ready. After some breakfast we put on our ski fits and send Kate off to the mountain where we are sure to meet her shortly (maybe). Oh and after a quick mirror selfie–of course!

• Baylee and I head out and decide a few things are in order: firstly, we obviously need some cute colored hair strands to ski with, well after we get the gas Baylee's car desperately needed, but in terms of priorities the cute hair was first (obvi).

• We head to Claire's and get distracted...it's in a shopping mall, how could we not. Well it was closed for another hour but still. Baylee and I ended up with new pairs of ski pants BUT one short hour later we are in Claire's and we are going to get our cute colored strands!

• Strands in toe we head up to the mountain where Kate has hopefully gotten enough work done to get some runs in with us. We geared up upon arrival and met Kate to start hitting the slopes. We get some good runs in and head back up the lift to get some yummy lunch. The sweetest girl came up and complimented my colored strands, saying "you look like a magic ice princess". Then Kate complimented her earings and she GAVE THEM TO HER OFF OF HER OWN BODY. What an absolute angel. Unfortunately Baylee was away from the table but she looked like an ice princess too, no new earrings for either of us though.

• Following our yummy lunches we all hit another run before Kate has to work again (booooo). Baylee and I gear up to snowboard. I do not know how to snowboard. Oh well.

• One rental later and we're on the lift. ON. THE. LIFT. This is not advice, don't do that. Death wish? Okay maybe THEN you can do that. But don't. Seriously. Anyway, we're headed up and we attempt to get off the lift. An act of God allows me to get off unscathed but Baylee ate it and smacked face first into, well, me. Oops. Well, down the hill we must go.

• Baylee is absolutely crushing it, and me...well I'm getting absolutely crushed. I kill it the first half until I catch a surprising edge and WACK, you didn't hear that but that was the sound of me getting gifted with whiplash and a major headache. Yeah. After practically crawling down that run there's only one thing left to do. Do it all over again.

• Back down the hill we go, and down I go all over again. This time, I don't get up. I was fine, I mean my butt hurt but I needed to consider all of my life choices before getting up again. That is until someone from the lift yelled at me to make sure I was conscious. I was, but perhaps not willingly. Kate whizzes by (her meeting ended and she was free to go), but oh yeah I'm still laying desperately on the ground. Yikes. Several falls later and some bruises incoming, I make it down. All done. If I drank BOY would I have a beer or a drink or an alcohol. Not for me, but I'm sure it would have been VERY nice after all of that. While I go and search for an apple juice (yeah long day), Baylee is busy hitting a box and getting ready to go pro.

• After her mountain debut as the hottest new snowboarder she must leave her entourage to, well, to meet up with us.

• Descending the mountain we decide we. must. go. to. SWIG.

  • Swig: proper noun (maybe) A Utah hot spot for serving up soda with creamer AKA–a Mormon friendly good time.

• How was it? You might be asking. Well, silly reader, we have no idea. Not a clue. Not the slightest clue. I mean Kate has had it and I guess Baylee tried it once to, but ME. Yeah, no clue. But we did wait in the parking lot for at least 30 minutes for the wifi to get back up. No luck. Oh well.

• We made our way back to Kate's place to hot tub and hangout and make friends with Kate's cool roommate from Montana (shoutout). So, overall not a bad night. Oh, and a yummy pasta dinner afterwards. Mmmm. It was heavenly.

  Day 3 I didn't see any Sun Dance, but we did have a Fashion SHOW!

• A good day started like how most good days started, with some delicious coffee at a cute coffee shop with my cutie friends. Well that was after I woke up with INSANE whiplash and crippling headaches, but that is how good mornings start, and I WAS going to have a good day, okay? Some yummy coffee's later and we've made our way to Baylee's secret fortress...a bookstore. Very cute. One purchased book down and, well, we're off to prep for our fashion show! And by fashion show I mean we're going to the Sundance Film Festival, but it's almost like the same thing. Right?

• A quick drive and we've made it to snowy Park City. We walked around and made it to yet another one of Baylee's lairs, ahhhh yes another book store. Then we shopped around a bit, which was seriously fun. Then pictures. LOTS of pictures. But what can I say, we gave the people a show. How could we not?

• Up next dinner. Well so, we were late to dinner...more photos needed to be taken, duh. And I mean okay well we did need to take cute photos while we there but if we couldn't eat while we were waiting, we were going to EAT while we were waiting. Ya know?

• Following our yummy dinner we, well we took more photos, but we did go to Kate's friend Klara's house to watch a Sundance film. Which, by the way, was phenomenal. Who knew with some good company, good snacks, and a good film, well you could have a good time! Truly, it was a phenomenal time.

Day 4: Ski you later!

• To my demise I did indeed need to wake up at the craCK of dawn to make my flight. Eyes half open I finished packing and made my way down to Kate's car to hitch a ride to the airport. Our morning started with BANG as Kate steered her car right into a concrete pole, but hey "Car's are meant to be driven" as Kate says. Other than that, well I made it to my flight in perfect time, although I did break a sweat as my gate was a mile walk. My ride forgot to pick me up from the airport but hey, who doesn't like to explore new places!