Golfing in Utah

I went out with a friend (Bill Benson) to play a round of golf over in Midway. First, the scenery was beautiful. The trees aren't quite at their peak, but they have lots of color. Fall is coming quickly.



Momma Deer and her babies were having snack time out on the course.



On another hole, a herd/gaggle/group/flock of wild turkeys were chill'n. There were about a dozen of them and they were as casual as the deer.



Nice weather. Nice scenery. Nice wildlife. Medium golf. Shot a 92.

We can send the finish line, but it is far off

Lots starting to happen at the house. The people who do the pavers were busy this week grading out the driveway so the it forms the base for the pavers. Tons of gravel. Tons of hard work. Now the radiant heat guys are starting to lay the tubing. It should take them two or three days and then the pavers start going down.



The big news is that the painters have finished everything but a bit of touch-up upstairs. They have pealed off all the plastic and masking. Now all the other trades can come in and start working upstairs. Should be a busy week. This is an awkward look up at the ceiling. You can see the big beams have been stained and the ceiling is painted.



This is my office. The color looks a bit odd, but it is really the base coat for some faux painting that will be done.



Meanwhile, downstairs is looking much closer to finished. The shelving is in the closets and the carpet is down.



Here is a little better picture of the carpet.


This week we are looking for some progress on electrical, plumbing, the deck, and the driveway.

Hiking at Park City

In my never ending quest to empty the dog's energy reserves, I have found a tough, but nice hike up in the Park City Ski Resort. It goes up to the top of a major ridge, at 8700 feet. The resort actually goes up to almost 10,000, but that would be a good bit more involved for hiking.

This is a view looking across the valley at our subdivision: April Mountain. If you double click on the picture, you can see a larger, more detailed version.



One of the most interesting things on the hike was the mix of colors. We have an extremely short growing season up here and I think that results in some cycle-compression. Here are some trees that are getting the jump on changing colors. We are still probably two weeks or more from the peak.



This picture was taken from the exact same spot, looking the other direction. It was a field of pretty purple wildflowers.


This doesn't show how pretty things really were, but up near the top was a huge field of yellow and purple.



...and down near the base, an entire drainage ditch was full of yellow flowers as far as you can see.



The mix of early fall foliage and late blooming wildflowers makes for a nice distraction as we slog up the mountainside!

Want to buy a condo?

Our condo in Park City is now officially on the market. It is listed on MLS and we had a very successful realtor open house (70 of them came). If you want to see the details, click here.

Touring the Northwest - San Juan Island

The last two days of our trip were out on San Juan Island. This is the largest of a chain of islands, ranging from tiny (an acre?) to large (12x20 miles). This island has about 7000 permanent residents and that can double during the peak season. I compare this to Park City, which goes from 8,000 to 40,000 during Sundance.

To see the island you can drive a car (which we didn't have), bike (which we didn't have enough time for) or moped. We chose to moped. The place we rented them from had normal little mopeds and then these odd, two-person things. We did a test fit for size and I would have been wrapped up a bit too tight. We went with the normal mopeds.



One of the sights to go see is a lavender farm. The people running it are big into eco farming and use almost no irrigation or fertilizer. The lavender is used in lots of different products, all of which smell wonderful. We were lucky to be there when everything was blooming.



One morning we woke to a very heavy fog. I enjoyed walking along the docks in the marina and shooting some pictures. The sailboats were almost eerie.



The fog also coated a few spider webs I found. The looked like they were made with strands of tiny pearls.



As the fog lifted from the harbor, it was interesting to watch the ferries emerge from the fog that was still heavy out in the channel. You could hear the fog horns long before you could ever see anything.



The big thing to go do is to see the Orcas (Killer Whales). There are three resident pods totaling about 80 whales. We had a nice afternoon to go hunt for them and quickly discovered a pod. The only downside as a photographer is that the boats are supposed to stay 100 yards away from any whale. As you can see in the picture below, sometimes the whales don't follow the rules and wander right over near a boat.



A mom and her baby swimming together, with a hazy Mt Baker in the background.



In addition to the orcas, we saw a Bald Eagle, seals, a huge sea lion (10-12 feet) and porpoise. This little island was covered with cormorants, except right down at the shore line, which was layered with Harbor Seals.



All in all, a MOST excellent trip!

Touring the Northwest - Seattle

The second hop of our trip was to Seattle. We drove up from Portland and immediately dropped the rental car off. Everything about Seattle seemed to be about the water and the harbor, so we stayed at the Inn at the Market, which is just above the Pike's Place market.

This is a view of the Seattle harbor and downtown, looking where we were staying.



In addition to a nice room, the hotel had a wonderful rooftop garden. There were tables and lounge chairs and a wonderful view of the sunset.



We knew the market had a lot of fresh seafood. You may have heard of them tossing the fish in to load the displays every morning. What astounded us more was the flower stands. Big, colorful bouquets were only $10 or $15. The flowers were so fresh. If you lived near by, it would be almost impossible not to go buy some at least once a week.



Every city has done one of the "decorate a relevant animal and auction them". Seattle had done pigs and was getting ready for the auction. There were pigs all over the downtown area.



There was a sand art demonstration going on. Most of what they were doing was big and involved. My favorite was the little Miss Piggy they had apparently done before starting the "real" work.



The only travel glitch in the trip came by phone call when we were in Portland. We got notice that the ferry we were taking from Seattle to San Juan Island was having mechanical trouble and was canceled. Our replacement was a small charter flight from Boeing airport to San Juan. It was very smooth and comfortable, although it was the smallest plane Julie had ever flown in. She was a bit nervous, but enjoyed the trip. One advantage to having our own little plane was that the pilot could fly us a lot lower. Most of the trip was at about 1300 feet, which lets you see lots of sights you could never see in a normal commercial flight. It all worked out well.









On to San Juan Island.

Touring the Northwest - Portland

Julie and I went for an eight day trip to the lovely Northwest. We hit Portland, Seattle, and San Juan Island.

The first few days weren't really to Portland, but to Hillsboro, OR, which is about 20 miles outside of Portland. We were visiting Julie's sister and her family. Sue and Marty are busy raising three girls, which are getting older at an incredible rate. I know I am not getting older that quickly.

Here are Jackie, Laura and Kelly, left-to-right, from youngest to oldest.



One of our trips was to Portland's Japanese garden. Very pretty!



One of the biggest changes going on in the Smale household is Kelly reaching 16. She is in driver's ed and she drove us around on most of our trips. Here is a picture of her working on some class extra credit: changing a tire.



After mastering most of the tire changing, she figured out how things are really done. This is her looking cute, getting her dad to put the tire back on. Women learn at such an early age.



Our visit with the Smale's was a blast. Card playing. Beer drinking. Hanging with the nieces. Nice to get in a visit before they head back to school next week.

More house

Things are rocking over at the house. In addition to starting the stain and paint upstairs, other subs have been quite busy. Hard to see on this picture (easier if you double-click on it), but they are starting the rock walls for landscaping out front. There is one running along the sideway and then a few decorative curvy ones up one the hillside.



Our two big, shiny chimney caps are on. Too bad the copper will darken over time. It sparkles right now.



All the backsplash tile is going in. This is the bar area.



A lot of the showerheads and faucets are now in. Notice that the light is on!!! All of the downstairs can lights and some of the decorative ones are installed and have power. It is fun to actually see some of the darker rooms.



... and yes, we even have some toilets installed.



Now we just wait for our return from vacation.

Lightning

We had a pretty big lightning storm yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, it was still pretty bright out, so I couldn't leave my camera "open" too long. I kept missing the lightning. Finally I used my camera's ability to snap a picture every x seconds. During one snap, I happened to catch a bolt.

Sometime I will spend more time on lightning photography.

Cranking on the house

Things are moving along quickly. The big change is the painting downstairs. Almost everything is done so they are now starting things like tile and electrical.

This is a little field of recently painted trim for all the ceiling can lights.



These are all the similarly painted speaker covers. This is downstairs in the family room with our fireplace and entertainment center.



Rooms are coming together. We now have paint, cabinets, and granite. Next comes the tile backsplash, plumbing fixtures and the lights. These all go pretty quickly.



Hard to tell from the pictures, but they did a great job on all the trim. It is stained a dark mahogany.



This is in the master closet. The cabinets look great, but now it is time to start masking everything for painting next week.




Still kind of messy out on the deck, but they finished the stone fireplace. In Park City, you are only allowed one wood burning fireplace. This is ours.



Still shooting for the end of September!