Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Utah Trip (Part 2)

Downtown Salt Lake City

We took a day and spent it downtown in Salt Lake City.  There were several things to do, but we had to pick and choose.  Since we didn't really go anywhere last year, we weren't quite sure about how things were going to look this year with Jaycee along.  This has been our first really big trip with her without other family around to help.  It was quite interesting, but we decided to find some things that would entertain her and keep us entertained as well.


 Our first stop was to see the Capitol building.  Really it is like all the others, we have seen.  But it was nice to just see another city's building.


We took several pictures of downtown from the road, but this was the best one that I could come up with.  The city is surrounded by mountains on all sides and then in the low valley, is Salt Lake City.  The city is really spread out and it rained almost everyday, but it was a very light, quiet rain.  Nothing like what we get in KS.  Many days were overcast too, and that is what kept the temperature down.  It was 85 degrees pretty much the whole time we were there.



 Now if you have known us for any length of time, you know that we are avid b-ball fans.  So, of course we had to get a picture of where the Utah Jazz play.  We really don't even keep up on NBA until the playoffs at the beginning of the summer, but we just had to get this one.  It was too bad that it was closed, it would have been nice to see the inside.

Discovery Gateway Children's Museum

Since we had Jaycee along for this trip, we thought ahead of time to look for things that were kid-friendly.  One of the places that we spent a lot of time at was this children's museum.  At first we were kind of reluctant b/c we didn't know if it would be a place for Jaycee's age.  Most of the families and kids that we saw going had kids many years older than Jaycee.  So we asked someone who had a child we thought about Jaycee's age what they thought about it, and in we went.

 This was the entrance to the museum.
The bright colors just scream fun!!!


Jaycee had a lot of fun playing with all sorts of things.  This place was a fantastic kids play wonderland.  She was in heaven and most importantly got to run around instead of staying in her stroller all the time.

 This was a fun tube that you put plastic balls in and they went down a mountain like thing.


 This reminded me of the Plinko board on the Price Is Right. 
You just put the balls at the top and watch where they end up at the bottom.


 More fun on the Plinko board.


 Jaycee got to vaccuum.


 She did puzzles.


We sat and read a couple of books.


 She played with some cars.

Then came the water.  The next several pictures are of her playing in the water.  It was really cool!!!  There was a thing that looked like a mountain and then waterfalls with ping pong balls that you could put in the water, and boats that could soar down the waterfall, and then there were cups, strainers, and lots of other water toys that went along with this huge waterfall.  To make matters really great (at least for Jacee), this waterfall was directly in the middle of all the other fun area to play so you had to walk near or around it at some point to get anywhere else.






 She absolutely loved the water.  It made it very hard to leave, and when we did, she started to throw a fit.  By the end of the water time, she was completely soaked despite the fact that she had her handy dandy little waterproof smock on.  It was a good thing that we came prepared for the day with a couple of changes of clothes.  So glad that I thought ahead.


 We played on a farm truck.

 I tried to show Jaycee how to steer, but she just wasn't too interested.


 We posed her on this horse, but she really didn't care for it.
As you can see her clothes are different and she was not happy about that.


 She found giant legos.


 More legos


 Tom & Jaycee decided to be TV anchors for a while.


Then Jaycee decided to ride in a helicopter.
Don't worry, it wasn't real, but a simulation of what a rescue helicopter is like.




The Great Salt Lake

This was kind of disappointing to me.  I had no idea that you couldn't swim or anything in this lake.  I'm a Kansas girl and every lake I know of you can swim in.  So when we saw that there was not really any way of getting close to this lake except by going to the look out points, we were rather bummed.  Not to mention that the day we decided to go, I was pretty much running a high temp. and was achy all over.  I think I got a touch of the flu, could've been when Jaycee threw up all over me 3 times when we were in Colorado.  Who knows????  Anyway, here are several pics we took of this lake.  It took us 30 minutes from the city to get here.  I had imagined that i was in the heart of the city or at least pretty close kind of like Lake Michigan is in Chicago.












Well that is the end of part 2 of our trip.  We had a blast, but getting sick was not onthe agenda, and kind of put a halt in some other things we wanted to do. 


the Ehrlichs

1 comment:

Amy said...

Look at her! Such a big girl in her flip flops! Glad you had a fun trip! Traveling with kids is something, that's for sure. :)