First Week

Here we are in Park City!!!!! We ran into a bit of a hiccup when a storm threatened to close I-80 before we got through Wyoming. So, we decided to forego our stay in Cheyenne and drive, yet another, 4 hours on top of the prior 7 hours we drove that day.

Fortunately, the flatlanders’ luck had not yet run dry and we found our “sight-unseen” house intact and non-fiction. Phew!

As you can see, the images that unfolded as we dropped down into Park City Valley made the long trek immediately gratifying. This is such a fantastic place, where “Dog-Friendliest Place on Earth” should be its motto. The contrasts between the people of Utah and those of Northern Michigan have proven stark and eye-opening, too. It always struck me as odd that it took me (gregarious and friendly by nature) 6 years in Traverse City to strike up a handful of close-knit friendships; this was underscored by the fact that on my third day here, I met a girl who invited Craig and I to a Halloween party with a group of her friends. In my experience, it would have taken a good year or so to develop that kind of rapport with someone in T.C.

So, the short and skinny of my first impressions of this region include the following superlatives: dramatic & majestic (terrain); mercurial & life-changing (weather); congenial, spiritual (people) . Anecdotal interpretation: the view is incredible; driving here is scary; and we are dumbstruck by the friendliness of everyone.

I would like to expound on one of the most obvious differences in lifestyle patterns here in the Wasatch Mountains as compared to Michigan. The decision to drive is always dependent on weather conditions, and I don’t mean that in the same way as Michigan’s over-zealous, willy-nilly declarations of “the snow storm of the season.” What I am trying to convey is the fact that there are an invariable number of automotive mishaps that can kill you when traveling the roads of these mammoth hills.