Anniversary Adventures

Since Ben and I still have the freedom to get away whenever we want, we like to take advantage of that on our anniversaries and take little trips to do something fun. This year, we spent a couple days/nights in Park City. Here's a review of what we did!

Wed., July 1st:

We arrived in Park City that evening and checked into the Marriott. We then went to Burger King to grab a quick bite before heading out to the theater to see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Thur., July 2nd (actual anniversary):

We woke up and had breakfast at the hotel (we brought our own food-since they don't offer a free breakfast-cereal, danishes, and fruit). Then we packed a lunch (again, we brought food with us to save some $), got ready and went out to the ski lifts and took the chair lift to the top of the mountain. It was a really pretty ride up. The mountains were so beautiful and green, and it was really peaceful.

After taking a few pictures at the top, we found a hiking trail and began making our way down the mountain.

Along the beautiful trail, we found a spot to spread out a blanket and eat our picnic lunch.

After we ate, we wound our way down the mountain. Some parts were actually pretty steep and covered in loose rock and we had to go slow and walk sideways to keep from slipping down. One time, though, my foot caught on a rock and Ben had to brace himself so I could slide into him and catch myself before I fell! Not once, on the entire hike down did either of us fall and get hurt! Our hike took us further off to the side of the mountain than we had expected, so when we made it down, we were near main street and the residential area.

We had to walk down a residential street in order to get back to the parking lot our car was in. Here is a house being built that I was looking at while walking:

Here is a pot hole that I didn't see as I was looking at the house:

And here is the result of the combination of the two pictures above:

I totally biffed it! I hit the ground hard with both knees and my hands. My left knee got it the worst. The right one was scraped, but the left was stiff and throbbing with a big bump on it. My right wrist was sore from landing on it, as well as the whole right side of my upper body. Ugh. Except for tripping and running into Ben, we didn't get hurt the entire time we were hiking down a mountain with steep trails and loose rock. But when we're walking down a street...watch out! Sheesh. :)

After our hike, we went to Cold Stone to enjoy some yummy ice cream (courtesy of Erin and Grant's generous gift!).

We went back to the hotel after that and went down to the pool and hot tub to relax for a bit. Then we got ready for dinner and drove about 35 minutes to Murray to go the Cheesecake Factory for the 1st time. We loved it!

Ben's "30th Anniversary Chocolate Cake Cheesecake" (Ben loved this!)

My "Lemoncello Cream Torte" cake (YUM! I'm not a huge cheesecake fan, but I love cake and lemon and strawberries, so this was perfect for me!)

Ben's dinner was "Crispy Chicken Costoletta", which he also really loved.

My dinner was the "Four Cheese Pasta", which was delicious!
Fri., July 3rd:

The plan was to eat breakfast, pack up, check out, walk Main Street and drive around town, eat at Subway, and then go home and get ready to go to a baseball game that night. Ben's body had other plans. After breakfast and as we were packing up, Ben told me that his back was starting to hurt. This may sound fairly innocent, but when Ben tells me that, I know it's trouble. Ben has kidney stones that started about 3 1/2 years ago. He can go quite a while without any problems (for us, that means about a year or so in between), so it was about that time for him to have another one. He has prescription drugs that he carries with him when we go out of town, but most of the time, the initial onset of pain from the stones cannot be handled by those meds. Instead, he usually needs to go to the ER to get stronger medicine through an IV. So, we scrapped our plans (which was fine, because we did the most important things that we had gone there for, and we were lucky it came on the morning we were checking out), and we finished packing up and started to drive home. I was hopeful that the prescription meds would work for him so we wouldn't have to pay for a trip to the ER. Unfortunately, that was not to be. As we approached Heber (a town roughly halfway between home and Park City), we had to make an emergency stop at the hospital there. Ben was checked in and given a bed while we waited for them to hook up the IV to give him medicine. It took them quite a while to give him the meds, but once they did, it was nice for him to be able to relax and feel better. The doctors always want a CT so they can see where the stone is and how big it is, but we really don't like getting them because of the extra cost. Ben flat out refused to get one, but they were so slow with everything that they did at that ER that we had plenty of time to think it over. Ben's pain seemed to fluctuate between nothing and (on a scale of 1-10) a 2, 3, or 4. So, we decided to go ahead and get the CT just so we could know if there was any big problem. When we finally received the results, he was told he had quite a large stone trying to slowly make it's way down to his bladder (6mm x 3mm). We were told that there's even a chance it won't actually pass and he'd have to have another lithotripsy procedure to break it up. So, almost 5 hours later, he was discharged with more prescriptions to help control the pain until it either passed or until he could make it to his regular urologist to see what he needed to do. I was sure all we would do now was go home and Ben would sleep and keep taking pills. But to my surprise, the medicines had done their work and Ben's pain had finally completely gone away. He wanted food and then he still wanted to go to the baseball game! I was pleasantly surprised. He popped some of his prescription meds to keep the pain at bay, and we headed off the to the game and had a great time with no medical problems. :)

Overall, we really had a great trip to celebrate our anniversary. Only one big snag, but it came at a good time (relatively speaking) and we still had a good day in the end. :)

Here's a slide show of some other pics from our trip. Enjoy!