Thursday, April 5, 2012

Thursday, April 5, through Sunday, April 8, 2012: At Manti (sort of):
The 200-mile trip to Manti (pronounced Man-tie) was easy. Some high winds were due today, but fortunately didn't materialize until late afternoon, as expected. Manti is on US Hwy. 89, the former main route all the way to Salt Lake City. We came through here with the Wheelers three years ago on our way to Park City for Emily's bat mitzvah. (We remember it because the other patrons---local Mormons all, we assumed---stared at us while we had lunch in a local diner.) It's a small town (population 3,700) with a huge, beautiful Mormon temple



(the third one built in Utah). We were told that their annual "Mormon Miracle Pageant" every June draws 30,000 people to the area from all over the world.

We are here on our way to eastern Utah and several national parks, with a side-trip to Park City (without the trailer) to see Donna, David, and Emily. We will get there on Friday, just in time for Seder.

We are staying at the Temple Hill RV Park, located just behind the temple grounds.


It's a simple but decent place, under new ownership, with very nice people who are anxious to please.

We had a nice dinner at Dirk's Farmhouse Restaurant in town, then settled in for the evening---preparing to leave for Park City on Friday.

The 125-mile trip to Park City was interesting---some snow, some rain, some fog, some blue skies---but uneventful. We arrived at Donna's house about 2:00PM. Park City was very cold, having had about six inches of snow overnight, but the roads were clear.


We had Ramsey with us and had to be very careful to keep him downstairs in our room, to avoid confrontations with Donna and David's two dogs, Norman and Coconut.

Donna had invited others for the Seder dinner, and they started showing up around 5:00PM. Among the guests were some school and volleyball friends of Emily


and a friend of Donna's going all the way back to grade school. In all, there were 15 people for dinner. Donna did a great job and we all had a good time celebrating the first night of Passover.



Some of Emily's friends spent the night.

Saturday morning we headed to Salt Lake City to Emily's volleyball tournament. The gym had 11 courts, all of which were holding games every minute. That meant there were 11 referees' whistles blowing all the time. It was very loud and chaotic, but interesting to watch.


Emily's team wasn't doing very well, losing some very close games. We stayed for about four hours, then went back to Donna's house.

We all went to dinner at a sushi place in Park City. I had a chicken curry dish. Delicious. It was a long day and Emily deservedly fell asleep at dinner.


Later that evening, we risked putting Ramsey and Norman together for the first time. It turned out to be no big deal. They got along just fine, and, later, even Coconut was OK having this new dog in the house. It was quite a relief.


Late Sunday morning, we started the return trip to Manti. By this time, the weather had returned to spring-like. We arrived at Manti to 80 degrees and sunshine. It was welcome after the cold in Park City.

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