Stampin' Up! Grand Vacation Utah 2013: The thing that surprised me the most!

When I earnt the Grand Vacation to Utah, I was excited mostly about the fabulous opportunity to visit the Stampin' Up! Home Office and manufacturing facility, and of course to catch up with fellow demonstrators and the Stampin' Up! team. What took me by surprise was how much I totally and utterly fell in love with the Utah scenery.

It started pretty much as soon as I stepped out of the hotel early on our first day to go for a walk around Salt Lake City. Even though I was looking across power lines, there was something magical about those mountains in the distance.

Salt Lake City itself is a beautiful city. Lots of lovely buildings, and lots of antique lamps and clocks and lovely big pots and baskets of flowers. It felt safe to be walking around and the people I did see were very friendly. I even saw some US demos leaving the hotel to fly home after convention, and introduced myself on the steps!

That afternoon, we were transported up to our accommodation for the Grand Vacation, the St Regis Hotel in Deer Valley, near Park City. This was about a 45 minute drive up the mountains (we organised a private transfer and were super happy with the service we received from Peak Transportation).

The St Regis sits upon a mountain. This photo is a bit blurry but you get the idea!

I will post more about this fabulous hotel later, but this was the view from our room balcony,

and this was the view that greeted us as whenever we were driven from the hotel into Park City.

We also saw some amazing scenery when we visited the Stampin' Up! manufacturing facility in Kanab. We left Deer Valley on coaches about 6am and travelled to Salt Lake City airport. The sun starting to show behind the mountains as we were en route to Salt Lake City was beautiful.

We flew by a chartered Delta flight on a Boeing 757 to St George airport. the plane was the largest passenger plane to ever land at St George airport and the media were there. You can read all about it here. On the way, we got to see some amazing scenery out the plane window as we flew over Zion National Park.

There was more beautiful scenery to see on the way to Kanab and back in the coaches (when we weren't playing Stampin' Up! Bingo!).

The Stampin' Up! manufacturing facility itself is set against a beautiful colourful backdrop. I will write more about the visit to Kanab in another post.

The other place we saw some amazing scenery was on our alpine slide ride at the Park City Mountain Resort. This is a 3000ft slide down the side of a mountain. the slide is a bit more of a relaxing ride than the Coaster (which hubby went on!). You go up in the chairlift and the views on the way up and at the top are stunning.

Here's a picture of a portion of the mountain slide,

and the view from the starting blocks:

and here's the Alpine Coaster.

I hope that has given you a little taste of the beautiful scenery in Utah. My husband and I have decided we would love to go back in winter to see the peaks covered in snow (and my husband is keen to Ski!).

Back again tomorrow with another creative post,

Claire