Utah Olympic Park

I wanted to go up to the Utah Olympic Park in Park City to see the ski show all summer, but it was one of those things that was just hard for me to spend the money on.  I knew it would be cool and the whole family would love it and be grateful for the experience, but still...

Then one Saturday afternoon I was looking online at the website, checking the dates for the shows and thinking about when Ben would be out of town and when we might be able to go before we moved and got ready for school to start again, when I saw that there was a FREE kids activity going on at the park THAT DAY commemorating the opening of the London Olympics.  So that was it.  We had nothing to do that night (how often does that happen??) and the combination of an awesome paid-for show and a FREE event for kids was enough to mobilize the troops.

We got there in just enough time to enjoy the end of the kids' activity - a kid-sized Olympics set up outside.

Badminton

High Jump

Tandem Slide
This has yet to be recognized as an official Olympic sport, but soon, my friends.
Very soon.

The kids LOVED the gymnastics course.

And what children's event would be complete without an
over-sized stuffed animal to take pictures with?

Then we headed over to the show to get some seats.
Jack was pretty nervous about the whole thing - he was crying and asking to leave.
We were sure he would enjoy it if he stuck around, so we tried to calm him down and just wait for the show to start.

And, we were right.  Once he saw what was going on, he was just as into it as Cat and Eliza.

Let me tell you.  It didn't disappoint.
These skiers were amazing.


I didn't make this video (I think the videos I made are stuck on my other, chronically-ill, computer)
but this video gives you a good idea of what we saw:

One interesting thing we learned was that they aerate the pool in the spot where the skier will land in order to  decrease the surface tension of the water and cushion the landing.  Also, it doesn't look very fun to have to swim to the side of the pool while wearing skis...

Survey says??

Two thumbs up!

Everyone loved it.

When the show was over we headed back to walk through the museum, and learned a lot about winter sports.  Of course, it wouldn't be hard to teach these Southerners a thing or two about skiing.

The next great American bobsled team.
Wait a minute... we might need another person.  Where's Ben?

Evolution of the luge.

This may be the closest they come to downhill skiing.

...and slalom skiing...

Maybe next time we'll go we'll fork over the big bucks to ride on the Olympic bobsled track,  try out the extreme zipline (which simulates a nordic ski jump), slide down the Alpine slide, go through the high ropes course, or even learn how to do freestyle jumps ourselves.  We could definitely spend another day or two doing fun stuff there if we had money to burn.

But our adventure was exactly what we hoped it would be - fun, entertaining, and interesting for all 5 of us.

What a great way to spend an evening!

Look - I was there too.