Thursday, March 29, 2007

Tony and Colt Hudson come visit

Tony and Colt live two doors down from us back in Raleigh. They came out to visit and to see some snow. Unfortunately, we have been having a long run of warm temperatures and no snow. More like May then March. Just the same, we found some for Colt that you could never run across in Raleigh.

After meeting them at the airport we went for a visit to Antelope Island. This island is 18 miles long, 3 miles wide and rises thousands of feet out of the Great Salt Lake. We did some hiking, saw some bison, and found a really cool skull of a deer.



On our most structured of the snow days, we took Colt to one of the local tubing hills. The warm weather meant slushier trails, which meant slower tubing. But it was fun! Why they don't open the tubing hills first thing in the morning is beyond me.



We needed to find Colt some deep snow. He had built two forts using what we had left in our back yard, but that was pretty meager. We headed up to Guardsman Pass, right beside the Deer Valley Bandana ski run. The snow was several feet deep and Colt spent about four hours on each of two days, digging a massive tunnel/igloo. Quite impressive. While he was busy working, Tony and I threw snowballs to Jasper (the dog). The dog played fetch for four hours and still wanted to play more as we walked back to the car.



This is the Park City sign up at Guardsman Pass. From here, you can see miles in all directions. In summer you can pop straight down into Big Cottonwood Canyon, but in winter it is for snowmobiles and skiers only.



Tony and Colt went to visit with a long time NC friend who also lives in Park City. They did more snow digging and then headed indoors to Kamas for a pool with a big slide. I think a good time was had by all. Just wish we could have offered our normal depths of snow without having to drive hunting for it.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Land in Park City

I have enjoyed watching the absurd things that go on the market in Park City. First, a 400 square foot cabin on 0.2 acres. It is right on Deer Valley drive. Because the cabin is a historic site, you have to build your house around the cabin. Asking price? $1.1M.



Now my favorites. Close to downtown Park City are these two lots. As you can see from these two pictures, the lots are small and very steep.





Notice that there is a really crappy house next door and two houses right above the lots. Getting any sense of the price? Each lot is 75 feet wide and 25 feet deep for a grand total of 0.04 acres each. Now how much? The "better" lot is being offered at $430k and the discount one is only $420k. What a bargain!!!

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Visit from Stuart and Laurie

This past weekend we had visitors in from Chicago: Stuart and Laurie Jones. They came out to do some skiing and were met with spring conditions. It was sunny and in the 50s every day. That makes for glorious weather for sitting on a deck, drinking a beer, and watching people ski. It makes for some tough skiing. Mornings bring hard pack, then a bit of nice snow, then slush for the rest of the day.



Taking one day off from skiing, we went over to Park City and watched the Half Pipe competition. It is always impressive!






Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Creating the guts of the house

They have been doing the low-voltage wiring in the house. This includes phone, ethernet, coax, and some distributed video. This first collection is mostly phone/data.



This is the audio/video collection.



There is well over a mile of Cat5 in the house. I am hoping this means never having to run another wire.

Boy, I sure hope they labeled them well!!!

Golfing at Myrtle Beach

We had a great golf trip in Myrtle Beach. Played once decent course (Blackmoor) and two excellent courses (Caledonia and True Blue).

Here is one of the less welcome participants we ran across. No one went and got their ball.


This is Darrell, posing with a ball that just missed being a hole in one. He could have won our days bet immediately with such a shot.