These next few days have had many things considered as plans. First, we were going back to COhome. Then we thought it would be a good time to do some mountain hiking in Leadville. After checking the weather, we thought it might be better to push that off until later in the summer. We toyed with the idea of spending time in Capital Reef and Grand Escalante. Finally, Zak had the idea to spend two nights at the Kimpton in Salt Lake City. Kimpton is my love language, so it took no convincing. After a lot of nights of camping, Kimptoning feels so good.
I drove the first leg of the trip from Moab. As Zak was driving, I was peacefully snoozing, dreaming about college basketball players. (We were listening to today’s episode of The Daily.) Suddenly, I was jolted awake by Ellie shouting, “IN-N-OUT!!!” Zak swerved across a few lanes of traffic and next thing I knew I was in line ordering. It was the best way to wake up.
After that delightful stop, we hit the first visits at Costco, Target, and Trader Joe’s since we left home. We restocked the Cheetos, trail mix, and conditioner. We couldn’t buy my beloved TJ canned wine due to the liquor laws, so also stopped at State Liquor Store #35 and picked up a bottle of rose. We swung by a Warby Parker and got Ellie a new pair of glasses. She’ll wear this Gorilla Glued pair for the rest of summer, but will have a new pair without a big glue scar for the start of the school year. (The Warby Parker folx were very impressed with my glue job.)
The Kimpton isn’t doing wine hour, so we had our own in the room with some of our favorite TJ snacks. After playing many rounds of Monopoly Deal, we tried to find dinner. This turned out to be a huge challenge and most of the restaurants open past 7:30 are classified as “bars” and with Utah’s strict alcohol laws, kids aren’t allowed into bars. (I can’t even imagine what kind of childhood Z and E would have had if they had never played Connect 4 with beer bottle tops at Brixies.) After being rejected at two places, we ended up at Squatters Brewery and had some fine 5% IPAs and good food.
