A Trip of Many Firsts: Three Days in Park City, Utah

After a year of coordinating and planning, we spent three days in Park City, Utah, with Visit Park City (the tourism board) and had the time of our lives. If you’d like to see, here are a few pictures from the most amazing three days that started 2020 off just right.

For starters, this was our view from our balcony. Doesn’t it look like something straight out of a Hallmark movie? A postcard? Photoshop? Park City is the cutest little mountain town, with unique shops (they refuse to put chain stores on Main Street), the best restaurants, and the most beautiful views.

We stayed at The Imperial House right on Main St. It’s a 4 bedroom, 4 1/2 bath house that is over a cute little market and restaurant. We kept saying the whole time how we wouldn’t want to change a thing about the decor of the house because every room was designed to perfection. Take a look:

We woke up on the first morning super early and headed (in a snow storm) to do yoga inside a geothermal crater (!) with Park City Yoga Adventures. Have you ever heard of such a thing? We hadn’t, which made the whole experience that much more exciting. It was freezing outside, but once you were inside the crater it was warm and steamy, and the water was 96 degrees so it felt good if (when) you fell in.

The class was taught while you stood on paddle boards which really tested your balance. As if yoga was difficult enough, this added a whole new element, which is part of the reason it makes it so fun.

After yoga we did lunch at Five5eeds. The atmosphere, the story of how it came to be, and the food there was beyond wonderful. Take a look at the cappuccino and hot cake below. Apparently it’s a very famous restaurant in Park City and celebrities from all over (Post Malone, Brandon Flowers, Justin Bieber, etc.) come to eat there and are close with the manager, Gabe, who was so kind and supportive and who started getting a little emotional when we were all discussing our foster care journey. The world could use more men like Gabe!

Once lunch was over, and while it was still snowing like crazy, we headed out to learn to ski for a few hours. We had never skied before, though PJ has snowboarded in the past, and grew up on the lake water skiing, so it was still an all new experience to us.

Have you ever been skiing? It’s so exhilarating and completely terrifying at the same time, as most fun things like this usually are. We picked it up pretty quickly, and our awesome instructor Dave gave us the OK to move onto the Blue Course (is that what it’s called?) for a more challenging skiing experience. We both fell at times but overall felt pretty good about our first day of skiing and only wish we had more time because we could have been out there all day!

That night we walked to dinner and had a little date at Tupelo in their newly renovated basement area of the restaurant, which was equal parts cozy and warm. There was wine, there was pasta, and there was apple spice cake for dessert. It was a good night.

The next day was another early one, but was totally worth the lack of sleep once we got to Woodward, a jump park/tubing recreational center that is basically every kid’s dream come true (and adult’s). To feel the crisp, cold air on your face as your zipping down the hill in your tube, and to look around and see nothing but snowcapped mountains is an experience we will never forget.

We hadn’t been tubing since we were kids and we realized we’ve been missing out all these years as adults!

For lunch we headed to High West Distillery to eat in their breathtaking restaurant and had some of the best food of the trip. Everywhere we went and everywhere we ate, our wonderful tour guide, Rachel, (who we desperately miss!) knew everyone by name. That was one of the takeaways from our trip: even though Park City is a worldwide tourist destination, it’s still very much a small town (less than 8,000 people!) with a small town feel, so you get such a sense of being welcomed with open arms. It felt like home, in all the best possible ways.

They gave us a quick tour of the distillery where they make their world-famous whiskey, and the whole place was beautiful and smelled like bananas for some delicious reason.

We ended the long and fun afternoon with a visit to the spa at The Lodge at Blue Sky. They treated us to a one hour massage which was so welcomed after the skiing, tubing, jumping, and yoga. We can’t remember the last time either of us had a real massage, and we have definitely never had one in a place like this:

On our last night in Park City was spent at the Ice Castle, which is one of the only ones in the world like this. It was hard to capture the magic of this place in photos, but it was absolutely breathtaking in every sense of the word. Bonus: they played music from Frozen the whole time, allowing us to live out our Elsa fantasies. We kept wishing our kiddos were there with us to experience it because they’re obsessed with everything Elsa, or as baby girl says: “YaYa”.

Dinner that night was at Fireside Restaurant at Deer Valley Resort. There were four sections of food there, each one served and cooked by the fireside (get it?). It started with a huge charcuterie section, a few meat and salad and soup sections in the middle, and ended with a fondue dessert section. It was so cozy and warm and every food we tried ended up being better than the last.

We woke up on our last morning in Park City feeling weirdly rested and restored, but sad to leave (partly because the Sundance Film Festival was happening in two days one block away from where we were staying!). We didn’t expect to fall in love with Park City the way that we did, but with a view like the below, how could we not?

So we packed our bags and headed to the airport for a full day of traveling home. As much fun as we had, we couldn’t wait to get back to the kiddos and hug them and hear all about their time staying with PJ’s mom (thank you so much, Lori!!!). This was our first trip since having them back full time and we missed them like crazy the whole time. However, it did feel nice to relax for a few days and take in a change of scenery, especially scenery that was so new and beautiful to us.

We want to thank Visit Park City again for the trip of a lifetime! We won’t soon forget it.Dan and Rachel- thank you SO much for your hospitality and kindness and welcoming us to your stunning city. If you want to win almost the exact same trip we went on, click here to enter a giveaway! You have until Jan 31st, 2020 to enter, so just a few more days!