Friday, August 14, 2015

Celebrating 22 years in Park City

Bryan and I celebrated 22 years of marriage this summer. Realizing that our kids were clearly old enough to hold down the fort on their own without the aid of a grandma or aunt babysitter, we decided to book an overnighter in Park City for some alone time.

We headed up the canyon on Thursday evening after work and checked into the Torchlight Inn, an awesome little bed and breakfast across the street from Park City's historic Main Street. It was such a charming and homey little place...we were delighted! Bryan and I both decided we'd like to stay there again on repeat visits in the future. I especially loved the history behind it. An excerpt from their welcome letter in our room:

"The Torchlight Inn was once the site of a very famous brothel during the Silver Rush. When mining was no longer lucrative, miners left in droves leaving abandoned properties everywhere. Many of the ladies of the evening could not afford to leave Park City and so remained here. One night a major fire destroyed many buildings on what is now Deer Valley Drive, including the building that was on this current site. The madam was one of the souls who perished in the fire. Some say she still walks the halls so we leave a torchlight on for her."
The view from our balcony looking over towards historic Main Street.






















This ornate and colorful wooden door stood up on the hill just off our balcony. I climbed up and inspected it a bit. As we checked out the next day I asked the owner of the place what the story was behind it. He said he liked to tell people that the door was left from the site's brothel days....rather than the true story, that when they took over ownership the door was just stuck up there in a mound of cement from the previous occupants...no idea why. I told him I liked his first story best and he should just stick with that.


After checking getting settled into the Torchlight Thursday night, we headed over to Main Street in search of some dinner and sightseeing. We ate so much BBQ that we practically had to waddle back to our room....but it sure was yummy.
The next morning after a fabulous homemade breakfast at the Torchlight, we headed over to the Park City Mountain Resort and took a ski lift way up the mountain side. The ride itself took quite awhile and it was really nice to have so much time to enjoy the views. We could literally feel the change in temperature the higher we got. Once at the top we followed a winding trail through the trees for a few hours. Eventually we had hiked our way over to a different chair lift that we took back down.



My original plans had us riding the alpine slides or coaster at that point. But dark clouds had gathered and we barely made it to our car in time before the rain came pouring down. Plan B had us heading to the Park City library instead where we spent the next few hours reading. Kind of nice, actually...to have some uninterrupted reading time seeing as both of us were in the middle of good books. When the weather perked back up we made our way back over to Main Street to try out a different restaurant for dinner...we had found quite a few the night before that sounded yummy. This time we hit an Irish pub which usually I quite enjoy. This one was only so-so...but the atmosphere was fun.

After dinner we headed up to Deer Valley to find ourselves a spot on the lawn for the Utah Symphony concert. They were playing the music from Disney's "Fantasia" that night. I was worried it would rain on us again, but the evening stayed dry even if it did get really chilly after the sun went down. We've been to multiple Utah Symphony concerts over the years but always in the grand Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City. It was fun to experience the more casual atmosphere of the Deer Valley amphitheater. Kind of hard to beat the combination of gorgeous scenery and gorgeous music all under the starts cuddled up under a blanket with my sweetheart.
We headed home right after the concert and while I wished we could've stayed one more night, it sure was a great anniversary celebration. Happy 22nd to us!

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