Graduation Celebration Trip: Day 2

After arriving so early in the morning, you'd think we would sleep well. You'd be wrong. I slept for about 5 hours before I woke up starving.

I peek out the hotel window and gasp in surprise at this scene:


That's right, it's snowing like crazy! Over the next 3 hours we get about 1.5 inches of snow. Of course, my jacket is packed in my checked luggage. This is snow piling up on the skylights over the indoor pool:

While waiting for the hotel shuttle bus, I ask the front desk if there's a grocery store around. She says there's a Super Walmart and goes to find the pre-printed directions, but they seem to be out of them. A minute later I ask her if she has a form I can fill out to join the HiltonHonors points program. She doesn't have any of those either and says I can call or go online.

We take the shuttle back to the airport to pick up our rental car. Since we're doing a one-way rental, they only have 2 Saturn Aura's in the full-size category. I'm not very happy about that since Mike wants to be second driver (which cost a lot extra, which I was surprised at!) and I think he'll be too tall to be comfortable in a Saturn. So we upgrade to an SUV, of which they only have a Mercury Mariner. It is a pretty responsive car, but it is narrow and we both feel squished. The car agent also tells us that she doesn't have any information about any paperwork we may or may not need in order to take the car into Canada and back. She tells us to call the Seattle airport office. (Nah, of course she couldn't offer to do that FOR us!)

Mike mentions that I need to stop saying "What else can go wrong?"

We program in the address for Wallyworld so we can get sodas and some toiletries. Here are scenes from around SLC as we drive:




Tulip tree flowers with snow in the cups:



Mike wants to go back and just hang out at the hotel. Boring! When you're on vacation, you don't pay to just hang around the hotel! You go out and do things! So I drag Mike over to the Clark Planetarium.


Mike goes to Mars:

And the moon:

We watched their dome theater show "Saturn: the Jewel of the Heavens".

Back to the hotel for nap, then we ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. This is "Italian Nachos": fried wonton wrappers with banana peppers, black olives, sausage, and sour cream Quite tasty.

For dinner, I had their Asian Ribs. Ok, but too much sauce. Whipped potatoes (pretty tasteless), and Cauliflower Gratin (not very good).

Then we check on the airline website to verify that our luggage will be arriving at 11:30pm. It won't. The plane is delayed. First they estimate a 12:15 arrival; Then a 12:40 arrival. As I write this, the estimated arrival is 1:50am. We have to pick up our luggage at 1:50 am... almost EXACTLY 24 hours late. It's gonna be another hell of a night! At this moment, Mike is saying this is the last vacation he's going on. Ever.