Weather turned beautiful again today. And the drive was lovely. Got to Sundance and hardly recognized the place! After all, it was 50 YEARS AGO that I was a ski instructor there working for Robert Redford. (The staff there were still reeling from the Memorial held for Redford just a few weeks ago when he passed away.) Sundance is now a big time resort – no surprise…it’s location was always great and the skiing always good.
From Sundance we drove into Provo. Hardly recognized Provo either! We drove around looking for a place to park the RV and finally turned up a residential side street and parked in front of “The Nelson Family’s” house. I walked up and rang the doorbell and Mr. Nelson answered the door. “Hi,” I said, “I haven’t been here in 30 years and was wondering if we could park our RV out in front of your house for a couple of hours while we walked around the BYU campus.” In classic Utah-speak, Mr. Nelson replied “You bet! Have a nice visit!”
And so we walked around BYU. UNRECOGNIZABLE from the last time I saw it. And sadly, some of the statues were covered in shrink wrapped plastic with signs that read: “Artwork protected against vandalism.” Sad.
The other notable thing about BYU is that as we passed Cougar Stadium, there were loads of television trucks there from Fox as the “Big Noon Kickoff” show is to be broadcast there tomorrow. BYU is still undefeated and now ranked 15th in the nation so it’s a big deal and probably explains why the RV park where we’re staying is packed solid!
The other thing we had to do was get the oil changed in the RV! It needs to be changed every 6,000 miles and CruiseAmerica said it was due. We pulled into a Jiffy Lube and, with six inches to spare on either side and maybe 6 inches overhead, we made it into one of their two bays and were in and out in 1/2 an hour!
Tomorrow my son heads back East. We’re right next to the airport so that’s convenient, but it will be sad to see him go. Hudson will be particularly sad as he has been receiving an inordinate number of hugs and belly rubs for the last several days!
I, on the other hand, will head to Canyonlands, the first of the Big 5 grand national parks in Utah and will be staying the night in the town of Moab, not far away.
Onward and upward!
