Stepping back in

Wow, It’s been a busy summer! Some months back, we got invited to cousin Zoe’s wedding in Salt Lake City, July 21st. So, in light of the past few family gatherings being to say goodbye to Mom, we decided to make this trip fun. So, on July 14th me, Greg, Andrea & Gavin piled into the car veryvery early and drove to the airport. Flew from Rochester to Chicago. Had a layover in the airport, it was fun watching Gavin see O’Hare for the first time. He handled it with equanimity, and liked the coolio rainbow neon tunnel between terminals B & C. (One of my favorite parts too.) And this was the flight in which we discovered that even if you have a flight from Rochester that’s flight # 217, and the flight from Chicago to Salt Lake is also # 217, you still have to change terminals and gates!

We got to Salt Lake just after lunchtime. Piled into a rental minivan, and headed to Evanston, Wyoming to meet up with brother John & his wife Amy. We did meet up, and that night had the delightful experience of going to the Evanston Rodeo. Hotter than Hades, and the rodeo performers were going all out. It was a quintessential American scene – the sun going down over the stadium, the riders kicking up dust.


Calf roping



Bareback rider, entertaining



Bull riding

During the ‘intermission’, they had 2 events for the kids in the audience. One was a ‘bunny scramble’. 3 rabbit wranglers brought out bunnies, and the kids all lined up on the opposite side of the arena.


The kids

The rabbits were struggling and kicking in the hand of their wranglers. (And Gavin commented that they had ‘sharp pointy teeth’, making the right hand motion; we’d just seen Monty Python and The Holy Grail the week before!) A whistle blew, the kids raced forward as the goal was to grab a rabbit, the wranglers let the bunnies down – and they promptly froze in place. The kids are racing, screaming towards them and you could just see the rabbits thinking: “if I don’t move, they can’t see me!”
The kids are getting closer and louder and closer and screaming and the bunnies wouldn't move. I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. I still get a fit of giggles just thinking about it.


frozen rabbits

And the evening ended with the young girls barrel racing. It was so amazing to see a mite of a girl, maybe 8 years old, racing her horse around the barrels going hellbent for leather. They were so tiny!

The next day, we headed out to Jackson, Wyoming. Took our time getting there, stopping at Fossil Butte, a superb national park, and location where Dad’s framed fossil fish came from.


Fossil Butte


John & Andrea in front of a large slab of fossil fish


After browsing in the museum for a couple hours (what can I say, one geologist and a couple geology geeks among us) we continued on to Jackson and checked into the condo at the Snow King resort, and got to the square in time for the shootout; which sadly, they don’t do on Sundays.

Elk Antler arches at the square in Jackson

So we headed out to dinner. The next day, we got up and headed up to the resort and did the Alpine slide. Fun! We all spread out until about 3, met back at the condo to get dressed and headed out to the white water rafting trip. Whoo Hoo! Rafting on the Snake River that evening included a riverside dinner. Gavin got to ‘ride the bull’, sat up on the front of the 16-person raft for a couple of the class 1 stretches of the river. It was beautiful gliding along.

... to be continued.