Serendipity: Shopping, Fireworks, and Zip-line

I love serendipity and the trip to Nampa is proving to be full of serendipity. Yesterday MaryAnn and I drove from KC to Cheyenne. 4 states in one day--Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming. We stopped at the Sierra Trading Post Outlet Store just as we got into Cheyenne. Serendipity. For two non-shoppers this was a special treat. MaryAnn was so excited. Only we thought we had 10 minutes to browse the store before it closed at 5pm for the July 4th holiday. When I was asking the clerk some questions about the store in Boise (hoping to tell MaryAnn she could do her shopping there) I learned we had crossed over a time zone and gained an hour. We had an extra hour of shopping on an already extra long day!

At our hotel in Cheyenne we just so happened to have a view of the Cheyenne city fireworks. I had hoped to get a glimpse of something "4th of July-ish". After all this July 4th is the last major holiday rounding off my first year of living Stateside since returning from Korea. It was so cool to see the fireworks after a long day of driving from our hotel room and then head right to bed.

We had a slow start this morning but eventually got on the road towards Salt Lake City. Today would be a shorter day of driving. As we got closer to Utah MaryAnn asked me to find something we could stop and "see" or stop and "do". Eversince Friday she has been talking about "ziplines". July 3rd was her Birthday and on that evening MaryAnn's friend recounted a story about riding down a series of zip lines in South Africa. The idea "stuck". So when I was searching for things around Salt Lake City on MaryAnn's Blackberry I searched for a "zip line". Surely it was a long shot but why not try and see if we could find one?

It wasn't so long of a shot after all. In fact I found that Utah Olympic Park had one! The Olympic park just so happened to be on our way into Salt Lake City. We wouldn't even have to change course or drive more! I called the place to be sure they were open. They were! Our GPS told us we'd get there just in time to make it before closing time. (this time we had the right time zone) What serendipity! On Friday MaryAnn had said of zip-lining, "I want to do that someday". On Sunday she and I did it together.

Olympic Park was great. We watched a team from Australia practicing ski jumps. They were jumping with water gear and ski's into a swimming pool. We rode the a lift up the mountain and did the X-treme Zip Line. What a thrill! We then rode the Alpine Slide. We were like two kids at a theme park. When we were done we drove 20-30 minutes into Salt Lake to find our hotel. A fun day!

Tomorrow we are going to check out the Mormon Temple in the morning. How can we not, I guess... On our way into Nampa we are going to stop on Jerome, ID to visit a Benedictine Monastery. I'm really looking forward to our second stop tomorrow!