Date:5/28/2021-5/31/2021
Destination: Salt Lake City, Utah
Goal: Lagoon; Park City Mountain; Culture
Distance: 1665 Miles
Means of Travel: Flying
Potential Credits: 11
Day 3
Why do I make such awful decisions and do this to myself? I woke up the next morning feeling very exhausted and with a bad headache. Not sure if that was the Mike's Hard Blood Orange (Mike's always fucks me up the morning after, regardless of what else I drank with it) or if it's just the continuing dull headache I had in line for Cannibal the night before. And I felt extremely fatigued, and it was like someone had drove over my legs with a pickup truck from all that walking. And I had a crazy day full of running around Salt Lake City ahead of me, it was gonna be a long one!
My first stop of the day was to be Antelope Island, a state park in the Great Salt Lake that was home to a herd of bison. But when I looked it up on YouTube to see where to go to shoot the bison, it was clearly not worth it. It was way out of the way already, and from what I saw, there was no way to safely get close to them to take pictures. And looking at the Utah group post I made on Facebook, one comment suggested Great Salt Lake Marina as an alternative, so I elected to just do that instead. This made my first destination that day not Antelope Island, but out in the mountains: the ski resort town of Park City!
But for how I felt when I woke up...
Hasa Diga Eebowai Count: 9
The drive out to Park City was gorgeous, it began with a drive to Salt Lake, then switching interstates, and then just going right into the mountains. Utahans continued their habit of loving to speed, no matter how twisty the road or mountainous the terrain! I had to get a footing in a middle lane, but once I did and was able to focus on the actual drive, it was something straight out of Red Dead Redemption, just unbridled wilderness and the occasional cabin or building for miles. I eventually got off, took this country road, and saw where I was going on the side of this mountain!
Park City contained two things of interest for me: Utah Olympic Park and Park City Mountain, which had a credit. I chose to do the Olympic stuff first because it I was much more excited for it. I've always been a bit of an Olympics nut, and Salt Lake 2002 was the first ones I ever watched, when I was in the second grade. That was such a powerful moment for me, I didn't understand why but I knew it was important when the Miracle on Ice hockey team lit that beautiful glass tower cauldron. Ever since, the Olympics were always something I looked forward to watching on TV as I progressed through life's stages, and I owe so much of that to Salt Lake 2002 and this place. I was so excited to walk around and see a real Olympic park where gold medals were won and legends were made! My interest in the Olympics isn't just on the couch anymore!
Heading inside, there are two free museums in the welcome center. The Alf Engen Ski Museum, which deals with the history of skiing and other downhill sports in the Rockies, and the George Eccles Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Winter Games Museum, which deals with specifically the Olympics that happened here.
I did the Alf Engen Ski Museum first, which wasn't quite as up my alley, but still pretty cool. Lots of artifacts from the early days of winter sporting, as well as exhibits on the mechanics of skiing and mountain geography, such as the type of snow used for skiing and avalanches.
Also found this medal pretty cool!
The 2002 Olympic Winter Games Museum, however, dealt with something I was much more familiar with. I even rewatched the opening ceremony before coming out here, which was much more interesting now that I actually understood the history and culture being portrayed in it. Your step into the museum just hits you with just how real this stuff is, these are real puppets used in the opening ceremony that I had just rewatched!
This was very cool, they had an actual relay torch bolted to the wall! Never seen one in person until this trip!
The concept for the opening ceremony, that Sochi totally didn't knock off for their OC, was a small child with a lantern, called the Child of Light, on a journey through the history of the American West. The Child of Light costume, and his lantern, were on display at this museum.
They had uniforms and bibs on display around the museum, probably the most common artifact on display.
Hey, Antelope Island might not have been as feasible as I planned but I still got to see a bison on this trip!
Medals! Plenty of medals! I've actually held one of Rowdy Gaines's swimming medals back when I was in high school and got to meet him through swim team, but not gonna lie, the designs on these are way cooler!
As a photographer, I liked reading about this. They literally did photoshoots with athletes suspended on cables pretending to be airborne snowboarding, ski jumping, whatever for promo material! Not how I expected some of those shots to be obtained...
This was another thing in the museum I was familiar with, you could actually lift this curling stone. I've actually curled before and know how heavy these are, but for those unfamiliar with this really cool winter sport, you could pick it up in this case.
This was some other equipment that was on display, different types of skis...and info plaques plugging the museum's experiences.
Pins! They had all the pins from these games on display in this glass logo, and there were some interesting ones, like the beehive and curling ones. Got a kick out of the green (and assorted!) Jell-O pins commemorating the favorite snack of the Mormon culture here in the beehive state!
Paralympic stuff! They had a few other cool things on display, such as one of the ice sledges used for adaptive hockey. This was sadly the only Paralympics stuff that was really here, and it's something that deserves more recognition. I mean, those people work just as hard to get where they are and we can keep the party going another two weeks!
I sort of wandered outside and wondered if I was supposed to be where I was. There are no clearly marked midways, just a bunch of cracked paths and dirt running all over this inhospitably steep Olympic park. And you just sort of stumbled into these ski jumps or bobsled track...
...and then I stumbled into this!
For FREE. Yes, free. Free free free. Like, totally free. You can just park it and watch the US Olympic Ski Team practice their jumps! They take roller skis down these jumps, do their flips and tricks, and land feet-first into this pool of water. They had stands and you could just park it and watch these Olympians in action!
I headed down the hill next to check out the bobsled track and man, it was a HIKE!!! It's super hilly, you start at the top, go downhill, and then go back up to kill speed, finishing under this super cool finish line themed after Utah's natural arches. They had a thing called Summer Bobsled Experience you could do, it was $80 to ride a wheeled bobsled piloted by a real bobsled driver down the course, but I was hearing times of 16 seconds. 80 bucks for 16 seconds? I was texting my mom about where I was and mentioned this, and she told me it was a lot, but also advised me not to leave with regrets. And considering the regrets I've had about certain trips, be it not having a nice dinner on Great Lakes or going at inopportune times, this was a legit concern.
I hiked back down the track and went to the counter and purchased myself the wristband. Fuck it. Bobsled leaves at 4, be there or be square!
It was 1:30 and I bobsledded at 4, so I needed to kill some time. Having seen pretty much all of the Olympic park, I decided to go to my second destination here in the Rockies: Park City Mountain, a ski resort with summer activities including an alpine coaster. It was just twenty minutes away, a little confusing on where to park and where to go, but I found it, parked my car, and headed in to be greeted by a ski resort, mostly green with a few drifts of snow still hanging out in late May. Plenty of activities were set up, some of which were traveling, some of which were permanent sporting installations.
My parents came here back when they were a young couple before kids, when they could do all these cool adventures without having to worry about parenting. One trip they always talked about was their time here, when they skied here and did Salt Lake City's clubbing and food scene. My mother still owns Park City stuff, so getting to go here myself was pretty awesome.
And the Olympic rings followed us here! This is also an Olympics venue, the wind even turned my hair into the Olympic flame!
I hadn't eaten all day, so went for a beer and tacos per recommendation at the ticket counter. All three of their meats were delicious, and so was the Wasatch Ninety-Nine Lager I washed it down with! Gotta love an ice cold beer on a hot day!
Speaking of hot day, it wasn't that hot. It was like 70-80 out, not too bad, right? But being up on that mountain, the air was thin and dry, and I didn't bother sunscreening up because I'm from the Midwest and it's flat and I'm stupid, so I stood in the hour wait for Park City Mountain Coaster with the sun very noticeably burning the fuck out of my neck. I tried to pop the collar of my button-down to cover it, but it didn't do anything.
Hasa Diga Eebowai Count: 10
So, roasting alive aside, Park City Mountain Coaster. I love Wiegand Alpine Coasters, ridden almost all of the ones in Tennessee and enjoyed all of them. Not at all top ten material, but fun rides that do a great job combining a roller coaster with nature tourism. Park City Mountain's I knew was older, predating the Sevier County ones, so I was excited to see if it was that much different than the newer installations. This one was also different in that it was run more like a sporting installation than a roller coaster, you had to sign a waiver to buy the ticket and they actually have a scale that weighs and displays your weight to the ride ops (yes, they actually see your weight, it's not a red/green light like Flying Turns), and you buckle in. They go over the safety announcement and shove you out onto the staging area to be rolled onto the course by hand one by one. Looking up the hill, I could tell it crossed through and over a box truss bridge to pass over one of the ski slopes, and the main ride took place in a wooded fold in between two of the cleared slopes. Here we go!
The ride itself? Great. Just about as good as Runaway or Rowdy Bear, not quite as insane in the helixes but had some great pops of airtime via the airtime bumps. Its setting? Way better than Tennessee ones! Things have actually had time to grow in here, and the coaster actually zips pretty close to trees, shrubs, and wildflowers native to the Rocky Mountains. This isn't just flying through a sloped clearing with a few trees like it is in Pigeon Forge, this is actually a real mountain, covered with dense-ish woods, that you're racing through. It just barely edges out Runaway in Branson as my new favorite one!
I looked at the time after...3:30! I gotta get back to the Olympic Park!
Park City Mountain is nice! As a summer destination park, there isn't that much special here, but it was obviously acting as a fun place for the locals to hang out and enjoy Utah's culture of sporting and the great outdoors. Their alpine coaster is awesome and so is their taco truck. This alone might not be worth the trip out to Utah, but it was a very welcome way to kill an afternoon waiting on my bobsled run.
I casually crossed town back to Utah Olympic Park and hit the ski lift to get up to the bobsled start point. I parked at the base of the ski lift, remembered how much I hate ski lifts, and had them put the bar down for me as I clung on for dear life. I can do a coaster that's on something rigid, but my fat ass swinging around up there with just a lap bar (I specifically asked it to be put down but the locals were just riding with it up), completely alone with the bench leaning to my side, it was terrifying! My phone was zipped, my knuckles were white around that shoddy bar that didn't even lock, I'm trying to pretend I'm somewhere else. Meanwhile there's a whole bench containing a single family, bar up, casually holding their smartphones 30-40 feet off the ground not thinking anything of it. This was a Midwestern moment for sure! If a bench with a bar spooked me this much, I'm so glad I never had to ride this horrible thing on display in the museum!
Hasa Diga Eebowai Count: 11
At the top of the lift, you meet the bus. There were four other people in my time slot, two girls from Vegas, and another couple from Ohio, the only other Buckeyes I encountered on this trip. This wrinkly old boomer sign was also hanging from the bus, so that was good for a laugh, as was this "intersection" that was a literal hairpin with a street sticking out of it, bus driver asked me to ensure it was clear his way because you can't see around this tight ass corner.
We were driven to the launch point in this building where they gave us these little snoopy cap mask things that went over your face (it was so weird covering my mouth but not my nose after a year of masking up over both), fitted us for helmets, and they went over the basic method behind it for us. We were told to get into the bobsled, buckle in as it's just a seatbelt, and shrug our shoulders and brace against the sides of the bobsled. Quite a change from the usual "pull the bar down and go" this coaster enthusiast is used to! Now we actually have to hang on and do stuff!
As they were going over the safety stuff, the bobsleds were being driven back up the hill in these trucks and unloaded. I met my pilot, a man my dad's age who spoke of bobsledding with the exact passion my dad feels about car racing, who informed me that "Newton's gonna do his thing" but told me to hang on and brace because it's going to be shaky, but the sturdier I am the less it's going to beat me up.
Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up it's bobsled time! COOL RUNNINGS!!!! See you at the bottom!
Well, I made it! That was fucking insane, but I made it! Most people probably can't say they've ridden in a bobsled but now I can be one of the few!
So you get in, it's just a normal coaster buckle, and your pilot gets in well in front of you. Usually in Olympic bobsledding obviously they run the thing up to the track, here you just sit and some guy rolls you onto the track. It gains speed, slides into the first turn, and here it feels like a normal Mack bobsled coaster.
Then it turns into Intimidator 305 or Maverick. But better.
That gentle, gliding motion that bobsled coasters have as they enter a turn are nothing at all realistic when compared to real bobsledding. You're booking it at seventy miles an hour, sitting probably less than a foot off the surface of the trough, with just a helmet and seatbelt to keep you safe, and at those speeds on rolling wheels in a flume, nothing is smooth. There is a LOT of kinetic energy in this light little sled, and you feel every joule of it as it accelerates more and more. When you enter a turn, you blast right through it, and then straighten back out immediately. It feels exactly like Intimidator 305, but with nothing to hold your vehicle steady, continually gaining speed, and the turns are so fast and violent you blink and you miss them. And it's up to you to ride defensively and hold yourself steady as this thing barrels down that mountain at ridiculous speeds, only getting faster and faster. Finally, we curve back up the hill, cross under that cool arch-themed finish line, and brake...and because I was solo, we didn't even have enough momentum to make it back to the finish building. So they had to tow us back.
Getting out, my pilot told me that we were probably pulling about 3 Gs around those corners, but in real Olympic record-breaking bobsled on ice, they usually pull closer to 6. He showed me this really cool bobsled configured for ice instead of the summer rollers we were riding on today, I didn't realize the skates were made of aluminum beams, felt like they'd be sharper for some reason.
Now, burning question: is it a credit? Is this a roller coaster, and does it go into my count? I mean, it rolls and coasts, right?
My answer: no. It's a cool coaster-like experience, but it isn't a roller coaster. It shares a lot of similarities with coasters and pseudo-credits, yes. It rolls powered by gravity, gaining its own momentum and using the kinetic energy to move itself through a course with no need for onboard power, like most coasters. Yes, it rolls in a trough instead of on a track, but so does La Vibora. Yes, there is a driver aboard the ride, just like Rutschebanan has. No, the track is not a complete circuit, and neither is Invertigo's. If you look at the ride experience itself, it ticks all the major boxes to count as a coaster. However, what does it for me, is the fact that the ride crew needs to take the vehicle off the track and drive it back to a start point. Had there been a device to link the finish and start lines to avoid this step, I would probably count it as a coaster. But when most coasters need to be lifted or launched, it really doesn't feel right to count something that needs to be unloaded and driven back to the start like a piece of sporting equipment. I can think of nothing I've counted that makes an exception for this, so this sadly won't make the count or the rankings. However, it's still an incredible experience, and just barely short of being a credit. I'd say it's as close to being a credit as those mountain slides with the cart you take up with you that both the Olympic Park and Park City Mountain had, and I almost did them but elected to do this instead. In my eyes, this is more of an alpine slide on steroids than it is a coaster. I'll keep an open mind, maybe if I ride an alpine slide I'll go back and revisit this, but I couldn't find it on Coaster-Count and it was never intended to be a roller coaster, so I think I'll not count it.
Well, Park City, that was a hell of a time! A great coaster and a great pseudocredit live here, not to mention the landscape and culture is incredible! I was actually sad I didn't stick around here or try to find Snowbird for their credit or something, but I had bigger fish to fry back in Salt Lake City! But this little town in the mountains is really a hidden gem, and honestly has the potential to be the Gatlinburg of the West if they had a bit more to do, but right now it's mostly just locals in the summer with a few tourists here and there, from what I gathered. Come on, Herschend, build a park here themed after pioneers and old school winter sports!
I wanted to do this so badly, but it was unfortunately under construction. And considering how I didn't understand why there were temporary guardrails in the road and nearly drove onto the UTA track turning left, maybe god just didn't want me to as punishment for my atheism. Whatever the reason, I like to learn about other religions and wanted to see Temple Square downtown, so I drove down from the mountains and into town. I knew it was under construction, but I hoped to at least drive past or park my car and walk around it or something. Nope! When the Utah group said it was under construction, like, this is coaster under construction. Big walls around it you can't see through, temple was covered in scaffolding and no Angel Moroni at the top. I could at least see the big dome of the tabernacle though, so that was cool! Maybe it was for the better, the sunburnt nerdy fat kid with the big stupid camera and Twisted Timbers shirt might have drawn attention on a plaza bustling with prim, proper missionaries.
Hasa Diga Eebowai Count: 12
Last Olympics thing, I promise! Next stop (after another wrong turn, this time into the back parking lot of the ticket building) was the University of Utah for Rice-Eccles Stadium where the Opening Ceremony of Salt Lake 2002 was held, and where the cauldron was displayed. I thought this was the coolest thing as a kid, and the lighting of this thing is really what kicked off my lifelong interest in the Olympics, so actually traveling here and seeing it was very meaningful. Sadly, this was under construction like Temple Square, the area around the base was blocked off and all the glass had been taken out, but the metal frame was still there!
But for the construction and wrong turn...
Hasa Diga Eebowai Count: 13
Seeing it in person was incredible, not for one but for two reasons: this was local company Arrow Dynamics's final product, literally forging the ride manufacturer's legacy in fire forever. It's the Olympics and coasters, the perfect metaphor for what this trip was.
After this, I got back on the road for the final stop of the trip, which was supposed to be the first stop of the day: The Great Salt Lake.
Great Salt Lake Marina is basically a parking lot you pay $5 to get into, a lookout point, a boat dock, and beachfront access. Up Saltair Drive there's this concert venue that looks like an old school bathhouse with roof spires and the like, you have to pass through a weird gated parking lot to get here, and across the street is some ugly factory in the middle of otherwise beautiful landscape.
However, upon getting closer, something was...off about this beach. It's Memorial Day weekend, we go to the beach on Memorial Day weekend, this place should be rocking with towels, umbrellas, and people in swimsuits having fun in the sun, right? And the smell was like that scummy ocean smell, but much more intense, almost like sewage. I switched to my flip-flops and headed down to the water with my camera and proceeded to check out this anomaly of nature.
Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! I knew to wear footwear on this beach, and so did everybody else. I had actually picked it up from watching a BTS video from one of Lindsey Stirling's music videos where she said dancing barefoot on salt flats cut her feet up, and I wasn't sure if that was because she was twirling and shit, or if it was actually sharp. Protect your feet if you come here, this ranged from feeling the salt crunch beneath my feet to hard layers of salty sand that actually shatter like glass and form hard points. Furthermore, watch for quicksand, it fortunately wasn't deep but I did step in some, sucked me in to about mid-calf.
Stepping close to the water, you'll see what looks like millions of tiny pebbles scattering with each step you take. These are brine flies, they're millions of little bugs that I assume eat the salt or something, and they're everywhere. It's almost like kicking the sand without actually kicking it, it's the strangest thing ever. They swarm everywhere and don't touch you.
However, while this place is incredibly strange, the one thing it is more than it is strange is beautiful. The Great Salt Lake is gorgeous! You have this large, flat, mirror-like surface with mountains towering over it surrounded by white sandy beaches.
The crowd here was mostly the hiking and photography type, so I felt right at home with my camera. I could see why this was such a hotspot for shutterbugs!
The Great Salt Lake is four times saltier than the ocean, too saline for anything to actually live in it, but these seagulls didn't mind!
I put my feet in the lake, I know people float in this like they do the Dead Sea, but I heard the salt can irritate your skin and I know that swimming in open water alone is very dangerous, so I elected to just go in up to my ankles to say I went in the Great Salt Lake.
I could stay here with my camera forever!
There were a few of these big salt deposits on the beach, it was about the consistency of powdered sugar when I picked it up. Not quite the course granules I expected here!
I often get asked why I enjoy traveling solo so much. A lot of the activities I do on the go, namely amusement parks, are often considered group activities. But other things I think can be more meaningful when you're completely alone to take it in for yourself, and this was one of those. I was a lone wolf, on my own, walking around, exploring, and photographic this literal alien landscape straight out of a Star Wars planet. I ran into a few people I chatted with for a bit, even took a photo for this couple struggling to get a good picture with the lake, but being alone with my thoughts for this was probably for the better.
When taking the photo for the couple, they mentioned the little rock stacks that I had noticed around the rocky sections of the shore. I was told that they were called cairns, and in hiking they're used both to mark a trail and as a way to show that a person was there. Wanting to leave a little piece of me behind in Utah, I got to work and stacked a little one, with the top rock shaped like an arrow that pointed east, back to Ohio. Will it last forever? Hell no, this'll get toppled or something, but for even a short time it stood as a little monument for Salt Lake City 2021.
Up top, they had this lookout point where you could read these little info plaques, outlining the unique water chemistry of this lake as well as the way humans and animals interact with it. I also learned about that building and gated parking lot up the street: it's a concert venue called Saltair that was once an old school Cedar Point-like beach resort.
Around 7, I elected to call it quits after I had explored most of the beach and head back to the hotel, but man was this worth checking out! This is absolutely a natural wonder, probably the coolest I've ever seen, and unlike anything we have back at home. The spirit of adventure definitely lives here, it's really a hidden gem just on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Don't miss it if you come here!
I wanted dinner to be something nice on the way home, but for some reason there are literally no restaurants out here, so I just drove back to that Microtel, grabbed a beer from a gas station with no hot food, found a Subway that closed at 3, checked into the hotel, saw I had a nice room with two beds, and began getting my shit ready to drive home the next day. Dinner would just be whatever the hell I could find on Doordash, I guess.
How in the fuck was I gonna get this home??? In lieu of a t-shirt (neither Park City Mountain nor the Olympic Park had decent t-shirts in my size, grrr!) I purchased this large book on the 2002 Olympic Winter Games from the Olympic Park...and it was a lot harder to get home than I expected. While I waited on my dinner, I emptied my suitcase, put this in the very bottom, and covered it with my sweaty, filthy laundry from the past two days just to get it in something where it could be moved. Fortunately it was shrink wrapped, I'd hate for it to smell like swamp crotch underwear after I paid $20 for it!
I was so relieved when my Doordash showed up. I love Noodles & Company, but I hadn't had it in years, so getting some Pad Thai and pot stickers to go with my Uinta beer was pretty awesome. I got pretty full off of it, a small would have sufficed, but I had been craving Pad Thai with shrimp and egg for a few weeks now so I kind of had to indulge a little.
I looked down at my wrist to see two wristbands and a handstamp from Lagoon, and somehow it was the most satisfying thing ever to have been branded and tagged to that extent by my adventure. It also left another mark: a minor but inconvenient mountain sunburn on my neck! I've been toting around all the proof, and battle scars, of the past two grueling yet incredible days as I've encountered shit, and here I was finally in the hotel room, chilling, the experience permanently in the past and not to be erased, and I was ready to come home having gotten what I came here for. But for the sunburn...
I stayed up for a bit, looked at my photos, and hit the hay, knowing I had a full day of flying home with a time disadvantage ahead of me.
This was, by far, the best culture day I've ever done. You don't necessarily look forward to stuff like this the way you do to the big, shiny, new RMC you're flying out for, but while coasters are amazing, it's important to notice the unexpected little things you sort of stumble into and discover along the way. I'll never forget this day, and to me it was just as important to the trip as the Lagoon day. I'm so glad I got to visit a natural wonder, feel the rush of Olympic bobsledding, and check out a place that's special to my parents all in the same day. I expected this big lifelong roller coaster adventure I'm on to take me plenty of places, but these were all experiences I never could have predicted even when the trip was planned. Definitely stick around in Salt Lake if you're ever here for Lagoon, it's a super cool corner of the mountains and worth your time!
Day 4
Another day, another early morning, didn't really want to get up. But I must. And I'm not some lazy deadbeat that lays around all day, so I toughed it out and dragged myself out of bed even though I didn't want to. I got dressed, headed downstairs, checked out, and drove my rental car back to NU Car Rental.
Rental car shortage is fucking ridiculous, they had locked the lot with six-ish prepped cars and that was it, and it was locked at night for some reason with nowhere to drop my car. I had to put it in a handicap spot butting right up to the street, wait on them to show up to open the place, and give the girl my keys while profusely apologizing explaining where my car is and why I had to leave it in a handicap spot that some grandmother probably needs. And to top it all off, I shared the wait and shuttle with this family with four rowdy ass children, I felt like I was in Home Alone. Come on, make more cars so we can buy more cars, nobody wants to pay $1000 to rent a car for a week!
Hasa Diga Eebowai Count: 15
At the airport, we got out and my beaten, fatigued legs made the long walk to the counter and to security. I hadn't seen a single missionary this entire trip but got a laugh out of this sign.
The line for security was also ridiculous that morning, with the line for TSA stretching all the way around the airport atrium while they were firing on all cylinders. The line moved super fast, but I had still never seen a line for security this long!
Hasa Diga Eebowai Count: 16
Through security, I got to my gate, purchased a set of wood-fired drink coasters for my parents' birthday, a dreamcatcher for my sister's upcoming birthday, and a Utah keychain for me. I also enjoyed some huevos rancheros at Cafe Rio in the airport, which was amazing with the sweet carnitas.
I made it to my gate, got on my flight, and headed home. Lady to my left was super civil, guy to my right was the type not to mind his elbow room and had his arm in my seat space the whole flight.
Hasa Diga Eebowai Count: 17
Unbroken was my viewing of choice on the way home, which is a running movie, a historical war movie, and an Olympics movie all wrapped up into one true story, and I loved it! In addition to being a riveting story that kept my attention the whole time, the theme of this guy wanting to just get home to see his family, specifically his parents, went perfectly with the moment at hand. Watching this movie, I wanted to just get off this plane, give my parents the gifts I bought them, and give both of them a big hug.
...and then I got to! We landed, I made it to the front of CVG, and my mother was sweet and picked me up! Getting to just chill, be a passenger, and talk to someone I care about was so refreshing and relaxing after two and a half days of running around Utah like a chicken with my head cut off. We drove home, the sound of the Brood X cicadas even louder than it was before I left, and I wasted no time giving them their gifts and glossing over all the cool things I did. Then I got home, got into my kitchen, and got ready to write this report, edit and post photos, and make the Cajun chicken sausage linguini Everyplate meal card that I deliberately left out as extra incentive to return safely. I had to get home in one piece, I had Cajun food to eat!
What a trip! Despite a good 17 slightly inconvenient and irritating hasa diga eebowais, the good not only outweighed the hassles, it fucking shattered them! I remembered how much I miss traveling solo on this trip, it's my first region trip alone since 2015 and just like Pennsylvania, this was super meaningful to me. Stuff like this, both the planned and spontaneous, have always been why I travel, and both have formed me into the adventurer I am today.
It's like some of those surprise elements on Cannibal. Sometimes the things you don't expect end up being the most meaningful experiences as a whole.
