Hello from Salt Lake City, UT

Hello from Salt Lake City, UT

Saturday afternoon,  July 19, 2014   (First post of this travelogue)

We are in Salt Lake for Pat’s Stampin’ Up! convention.   We were able to get reservations at the Marriott (Downtown) again this year.  This hotel is right across the street from the convention center.  We got a corner room, conveniently overlooking construction of a new building {grin}.

We left Evergreen Tuesday (7/15) and stayed in Green River, UT (our normal stop).  Wednesday we arrived in Salt Lake in the early afternoon and Pat started her meetings that night.

There are about 4,000 SU demonstrators here this year.  In years past there were as many as 7,000 demonstrators and they had to have two sessions of the convention.

I have been holed up in the room quite a bit working on a computer project for our Eagles club.  I have spent lots of time learning database management, software program code modification and all those fun things.  It is a fun challenge, but I have spent way too much time of the project (probably 300 hours over the past several weeks). 

Today was the last day of the convention.  Pat has been going almost non-stop.  The last meeting just got out and there is a huge line waiting for the elevator.  As I draft this, I am stuck in the lobby until the crowd clears.  I had to come down here when they cleaned the room – I knew the timing was terrible.

Yesterday, I drove up to Hooper, UT (about 35 miles north) to visit with a good friend.  It is always good to see Kent and talk about buses and cars.

Tonight we have tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performance.  This will be the third time that we have seen them and it has been an amazing performance in the past.

Tomorrow we will start home.  We are changing our route so that we can stop in Gunnison to visit our two grandsons who go to college there.

That is all of now.

Hello from Salt Lake City, UT

Hello from Salt Lake City, UT

Friday evening August 9,  2013   (First travelogue of this trip).

Well, this was almost a trip in our bus.  Originally, we had planned to go to Bonneville and then drive the bus to the Seattle area.  Part of the Bonneville visit was to meet with the owner of a new streamliner that I designed the belt drives for (blower and power to the differentials).  It turns out that they will not be at Bonneville for this event (Speed Week).

Then NTT offered me a couple of classes in Las Vegas during Bonneville week.  That really messed up our plans, but we could not turn down the money.

So, we decided to drive a rental car to Las Vegas, via Salt Lake/Bonneville.  The choice of using a rental car was based on not piling on more miles on our already relatively high mile cars plus the fact that we would not have to worry about car problems.  The cost is partly offset by better mileage, and offsetting funds from NTT for the equivalent flights and rental car for the week (perhaps 40% of the cost).  We will then fly from Las Vegas to Seattle for the second week of training plus some sightseeing.  We will return to LV and take a leisurely, tourist route home.  At least that is the plan now.

We left Evergreen Thursday (8/8) afternoon and drove to Craig, CO.  We stayed in a Holiday Inn.  Kind of a strange room, as the only chair was the desk chair.  I sat on the luggage and Pat sat in the desk chair.  Considering that we were paying over $100, we were not happy.  They said that all of their rooms were equipped the same way.

Today we drove to Salt Lake and are staying in a Holiday Inn Express(map).  We made sure that the room had a desk and second chair.  We told them our story and I guess they took pity on us.  We are in a suite with a total of three chairs and a couch (for $90)!

We have had a lot of folks tell us about Cafe Rio.  We looked them up and drove to Tooele, UT to have dinner there.  It is a Mexican restaurant where you order you plate like you do at Chipotle.  The food was great!

Tomorrow I will drive to the Bonneville Salt Flats.  That is about 100 miles one way.  The event (Speed Week) goes all week.  However, I will only be able to go for one day.

That is all for this post.

Hello from Salt Lake City, UT

Hello from Salt Lake City, UT

Sunday afternoon  July 21, 2013   (second travelogue of this trip).

Well, as Paul Harvey would say:  “now for the rest of the story”. 

After teaching the class in Denver I was supposed to catch a 10:00 pm flight to Salt Lake to meet up with Pat at her convention. Well the plane was three hours late and I got to the room at 3:11 am  That is two weeks in a row.  As I mentioned in a previous post,  a bit over a week ago,  I was flying back from Seattle (taught a class at Boeing) and that plane was delayed 4 hours (got home just before 5:00 am). Did I mention that I hate flying? 

Friday was my birthday (71, but who is counting?).  I had hoped to at least be in the air to Salt Lake by the end of the day – didn't happen.  As you read the rest of this post, you will see that I had a great belated birthday.

Pat and I are staying at the Hilton Inn, City Center (map).  She would have preferred to stay at the Marriott, but they were booked up – even though she registered for the convention (and rooms) within minutes of the site going on line.  She said that there were 5800 Stampin' Up! demonstrators attending this year.  That is up from past years, but this was the 25th anniversary convention.

Pat and I got to have dinner last night with a great bus friend and his wife.  I always try to see Kent when I am in the area.  He has has been fighting cancer for several years and has managed to “beat the odds” through some experimental treatments.  You would not know about his journey, as he handles the situation much better than most folks would in the same situation.

We also got to attend a very special Mormon Tabernacle concert. The performance included both the choir and and orchestra as well as two extremely talented guest artists:  Nathan Pacheco and Lindsey Stirling.  The concert is free, but you need to order tickets early.  Words can't describe how amazing the concert was!!  Then to top it off when we came out, the full moon was right over the beautiful spires in Temple Square (see photo).

I am actually posting this from Salt Lake.  We are in the airport waiting for -are you ready?- a delayed flight!  Right now, the delay is only 40 minutes – yeah sure!

We had a very leisure morning today.  Pat was tired from her convention and I was tired from lack of sleep.  We arranged a late check out and that allowed us to have nice, albeit expensive, breakfast at the hotel.

That is all for this trip.

Hello Again from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Hello Again from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sunday evening July 17, 2011 (second travelogue of this trip).

The Stampin' Up! Convention concluded Saturday, late afternoon. Pat tells me that there were 3,300 attendees. That is up a bit from last year but down from several years ago where they had to divide the convention into two sessions and around 7,000 demonstrators attended. They, like everyone else, are suffering from a “soft” economy. There is no doubt in our minds that they will thrive when the economy improves.

I have been able to find a wonderful local restaurant for breakfast – Lamb's Cafe. The food is great and reasonable and the coffee is the best I have tasted in a restaurant. In the evenings I have been going to a pub with a sidewalk seating area. The draft beer is local (several varieties) and the sandwiches are great (take half back to room for lunch the next day).

I have been amazed at the number of local beers available. Somehow I pictured Utah as being mostly Mormon and anti drinking. Sure not the case. The beers run the gamut from very light to dark stouts. The ones I sampled were great.

I have been doing quite a bit of catching up on computer work during the day. Still way behind on some reading projects, but I will probably never catch up on those. The Marriott charges $12.95 per day for Internet access, so our air card is really paying for itself.

On Friday I drove about 40 miles north to the town of Hooper to visit a good friend of mine. Kent is another bus nut and a really great guy. He is really struggling with cancer and I worry about him all the time. He seemed to be doing reasonably well and continues to plan for the future – including several big bus projects. We had a ton of fun talking about all kinds of things and then went to two car shows in Ogden. We then went to a local hamburger stand that is famous in the area. Great burgers.

We are staying over a couple of days so that Pat can spend a day at the Mormon Family History Library. She has said several times that she wanted to spend a day there to see what resources are available. As was noted in a comment to our last post, the reputation of this resource is extremely good. Pat has been working on our family genealogy for the past few years and hopes that she can get some new information to expand her work.

We did not have anything scheduled today, so we just relaxed. Pat is absolutely worn out from all the activity and it was fun for me to cool my jets as well. Still got some work done, but at a more relaxed pace. My new fire detection system project is really consuming a lot of time right now. I sure hope it is worth all the work. The system performs very well and the total system is far superior to anything on the market, but it will be more costly. The person we are developing the system for seems to have good contacts.

I tried to attend the practice of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on Thursday night. The information in Temple Square says they practice most Thursday evenings, but not this past Thursday. I then went to hear the organ recital on Saturday. I could not tell if it was a normal recital or not, but I was a few minutes late and they had locked the doors. I should be able to attend one tomorrow and I will be on time {grin}.

That is all for now.

Hello from Salt Lake City Utah.

Hello from Salt Lake City Utah.

Thursday afternoon July 14, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

Before we get started on documenting this trip, I want to mention that I have not given up on adding more details and photos for our family vacation in Dillon, CO. We had a blast and I want to tell the readers a bit more about our great time. Maybe next week.

We are in Salt Lake City for a Stampin' Up! Convention. Pat attends each year. I have accompanied her twice. The last time was in 2009 (documented here). We are again at the Marriott Downtown (map).

As was the case last time, we have a corner room that overlooks the continuing construction of the huge reconstruction of downtown Salt Lake (details here). Most of the huge cranes are gone, but the construction continues. I am still able to do a little “sidewalk supervision”.

We left Denver about noon on Sunday (7/10) with the intention of taking a leisurely, scenic drive in the PT Cruiser. We chose to take US 40 through Colorado and Utah. We enjoy this route as an alternative to the interstate. We stayed the first night in Craig, CO at the Hampton Inn. It was a great experience as the room was very nice and the employees were quite friendly. They even gave us a tip about a great Mexican food restaurant.

Our next stop was Park City. We had decided to try the Hampton Inn again, but it was booked. We decided to fall back on our “normal” choice: Holiday Inn Express. It was your typical Holiday Inn experience which is just kind of OK.

The drive from Park City to the Marriott is about an hour, so we did not leave Park City very early. As usual, Pat was a bit behind in getting her swapping cards read for the convention, so she worked on them at each of the motels.

Swapping cards is quite a tradition at these conventions. Most attendees prepare between 100 and 200 cards and then trade them with other demonstrators. It really gives them a large base of ideas for cards they can prepare for their workshops.

Pat qualified for the VIP level at the convention. That gives her access to a large room in the Salt Palace Convention Center where she can relax (yeah, right). It also qualified both Pat and I for a special tour of the Stampin' Up! headquarters and distribution headquarters. It is a huge, beautiful new facility that Stampin' Up! paid cash for. The distribution facility is huge and extremely well equipped. At the time of our tour, they were filling two large UPS trailers for the day's shipment. We were transported both ways in beautiful Prevost Buses (for the readers with buses, that is our bus content).

Pat is on the go from basically sun-up to sun-down. There are tons of activities and, of course, meeting new and old friends. While she is attending the activities, I am trying to catch up on a bunch of work/projects. I have also been taking long walks and viewing the amazing Temple Square which is just a block from the hotel. On the walks, I was able to scout out a great historical, local restaurant for breakfast, and a pub with sidewalk tables and a huge variety of beers and good sandwiches for dinner.

That is all for this post.

Hello from Salt Lake, UT

Saturday morning September 5, 2009 (third travelogue of this trip)

I am writing this on our 45th wedding anniversary. Boy how time flies!!!

We are at the Airport Inn right at the Salt Lake airport (map). We stayed here when we were in Salt Lake a few weeks ago. It is a moderate hotel that is sufficient for this trip. We have a fridge and micro wave and a large room – all for less than $60. That includes a cooked breakfast!

We arrived here Tuesday (9/1). I have been working on an installation of my system for the past three days. I did not quite get finished yesterday, so I will have to spend a couple of hours this morning. The installation has gone well, but it is more complicated than most because of some options that we installed. The folks that own the coach are quite handy and have been helping out doing some of the work. That has really worked well. They are great folks who are full timers (live in their coach full time) and take great pride in their “home”. It is a 1997 Newmar Mountain Air that they have kept in immaculate condition.

Later today I hope to visit a friend in Ogden and then Pat and I will be going the the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate our anniversary.

Have to keep it short so that I can get to work {grin}

Hello from Salt Lake City, UT

Hello from Salt Lake City, UT

Friday morning August 7, 2009 (First travelogue of this trip)

We are staying at the Marriott Downtown (map). We are here for Pat's Stampin' Up! convention. There are often 7000 demonstrators at the convention, but this year we think it is down considerably.

We left Evergreen on Monday and stopped in Green River, UT. We chose that as a stop, since my folks used to stop there when we traveled west and Pat and I have stopped there several times. We stayed in the Best Wester, which overlooks the Green River and ate at the adjoining Tamarisk restaurant. We have enjoyed that restaurant many times because of the view and the reasonably good food. The name of the restaurant is interesting. In Colorado (and many other places) it is considered a terrible invasive plant that uses huge amount of precious water.

We have a corner room at the Marriott and one window looks east onto a huge (and I do mean HUGE) construction project. The project is describe at: http://www.downtownrising.com/vision/. I can see 6 huge cranes directly to the east and on the north side, there are several more. The project spans several city blocks. And this is just the first stage. The project that we can see is City Creek Center: http://www.downtownrising.com/city_creek/index.php. I talked to a friend and he made the observation that the project was the vision of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). This is their founding location and is the center of all church activity. Apparently the area was “decaying” and they wanted to make sure that the project resulted in a highly desirable location to live/work/worship/visit.

If you have been following our blog, you know that the engine in our bus needs to be rebuilt or replaced. A good friend told me about an engine at a truck salvage yard in Ogden (just north of here). I did some research on the engine and it looks like a good value, since it has been rebuilt recently. Wednesday I went up and put my computer on the engine ECM and read out all of the pertinent data. The engine appears to be what the salvage yard claimed. I ran the engine, but it is almost impossible to tell much since you can't put a load on it. Long story short, I bought the engine and will have it shipped to Denver.

Wednesday was a big day for Pat (lots of activities). I tried to do some catching up on various business (and some fun) activities. Of course, I had to spend some time being a “sidewalk superintendent”. I am having a ball watching all the construction activities from our 11^th floor window and from the street level as well.

That is all for this post.