park city

well, if you know us, we can never go without a vacation for too long. even if it is just for a weekend and not too far away. i think we are pretty good at making any kind of a weekend a little mini vacation. travelling is one of our most favorite things to do and is something we will probably enjoy doing for the rest of our lives, even when kids are added into the mix!

this past weekend we packed up our car and headed up to park city. we absolutely love park city and it's cute little atmosphere. we have always just gone up for a day and shopped but never actually stayed up there in a hotel and such. it's more practical staying with his parents who only live about 45 minutes away. i found a great deal on a super nice hotel and decided to make a weekend of it.

we left friday afternoon after work and stopped in slc at one of our favorite restaurants, cheesecake factory. as always, it was the yummiest. by the time we go to park city it was early evening time. park city is always so pretty, summer or winter. i love how green it is in the summer though! as we checked into our hotel, the chateaux at silver lake, we couldn't help but notice a lot of cars, police, and a huge white tent in the middle of the courtyard. the front desk people told us that mitt romney, along with hundreds of other governors, senators, and politically important were there on a retreat to support mitt romney. say what?! politically important people such as condoleezza rice, john mccain, etc, etc. we were staying in the same hotel as the possible future mr. president of the united states? that was pretty darn cool in our minds. we even almost got to see him! haha. there was secret service people there that didn't even let us get close. we also felt really out of place at times walking around the hotel with people addressing people as "hello governor" and "i love what you said on tv the other day" and such. those things were really said! we just happened to be overhearing what sounds like important conversations i'm sure. too bad we didn't know the people. i'm sure we were walking by some very important people without even realizing it.

romney in his car in park city 

(stole if off the link above. i wish i really saw him!)

the giant tent

anyways, back to our awesome weekend minus mitt romney. after we checked in and weaved through the important people, we walked into the most amazing suite we've ever stayed in. it was absolutely gorgeous. it had a kitchen, laundry room, dining room, living room, master bedroom, two bathrooms, a downstairs access to more bedrooms....yes, quite unbelievable! we didn't want to check out at the end of the weekend! i could have lived there.

some of our suite!

our room number and room key 

(i like messing around with my camera) 

from quin's iphone 

the pool 

republican cookies 

walking around. our hotel in the background 

that night we walked around the hotel and explored the whole "silver lake" area. technically our hotel was located in deer valley but to me it's pretty much park city. it's so stinkin pretty up there and way cooler than st. george. the evening was perfect. we went down to main street and walked around the shops and got some ice cream.

the next morning, we headed out to midway to go to the homestead crater. on our way out, we stopped by burger king real quick for breakfast (i know, classy right?) and they had the coolest soft drink machines! literally, one machine, and you could choose any drink and add any flavor into it! i say pretty cool. we only got water out of it but wanted to come back later to get a real drink. anywho, sorry for all the tangents.

the homestead crater is pretty darn cool. they actually had it on the bachelor when ben was it. i didn't realize it was the same one until i overheard someone else talking about it. it is pretty much a crater with a natural warm springs in it and you can go scuba diving, snorkeling, and swimming. we just swam in it because the other stuff was a little too much moolah. we highly enjoyed it though and it was very relaxing! it is a pretty awesome natural wonder. 

the top

this bridge was over the top of the crater 

on our way back to park city, we took the scenic route over the mountains. it's so pretty up there, it's impossible not to enjoy the outdoors! we stopped every now and then and took pictures. it was a nice little peaceful drive.

once we got back to the hotel, we wanted to go swimming. as we headed out to the pool, a secret service guy stopped us and told us we couldn't go swimming because the "important event" was going on. he told us we could go over to stein erickson hotel and swim there though. so they shuttled us to there and we got to swim in a very nice pool. apparently, the chateaux and stein erickson are sister properties so we pretty much had access to both hotels. and both are super nice, ritzy hotels. without the online deal, there was no way we could have afforded it! it was definitely worth it though. we ate some lunch by the pool, enjoyed some sunshine, and met some other folks there on a little weekend getaway as well. 

after the pool, we got ready and headed down to the alpine slide at the park city mountain resort. i had never been up there and quin hadn't been since he was in high school so we though it would be a fun, less expensive activity. as we were going up there, quin told me horror stories of when him and his friends used to go and sometimes they would go to fast and run off the tracks! i was kinda nervous getting there up and starting but once you get the hang of it going down, it's not bad at all. we had a blast! we wanted to go again but once was good enough for now. we'll have to come up again and go. we topped off the activity with some yummy dippin dots! (we ate a lot of dessert this trip).

that night we wanted to get dressed up and eat at a nice restaurant. when we got back down to main street, we didn't know there was a huge dinner party on main street! there was basically one huge dinner table that ran all the way down the whole street. each restaurant had a section of it that they served. this made our dinner plans a little tricky. we finally found a restaurant that didn't participate and ate there. it was pretty yummy too! the people doing the dinner party were all really drunk and it was pretty funny watching them try to dance to the live band when wasted. we also go a chocolate, peanut, caramel apple for dessert to share. probably the best caramel apple ever!

the next morning was sunday and our last day. we were pretty bummed that we didn't get to stay any longer than that. we asked for a late checkout time and they gave us until 2:30 in the afternoon so it pretty much felt like we had the whole day. we had made appointments for a couples massage at stein erickson and pretty much just relaxed until those. the spa was amazing!! neither one of us have had a real massage so we braved up and did it. i can't believe what all comes with the massage. we pretty much has access to the whole spa. now i know what it means to have a spa day! if we would have known that, we probably would have hung out there the entire day. it was so nice and relaxing. they pretty much treated you like you were royalty too. so awesome.

overall, this trip was probably the most relaxing vacation ever. we didn't have to cram stuff in to the couple days we were there. we just enjoyed what we did and relaxed while doing it. we would definitely go there again! we enjoyed is so much, they gave us a coupon for buy one night, get one free. sweet. we'll be going again for sure!! and if we don't, we'll give it to one of you to use because everyone needs to stay at this place.

ps. don't you just love quin's shirt? we bought in cali and it's probably my most favorite shirt ever.