(DEER VALLEY – Friday, 7:30 AM) Our condo is on the main road from Park City to Deer Valley. We have free shuttle bus service that picks as up and drops us off right out in front. Other than the dry air that you experience at the elevation of 5500 feet despite humidifiers, it is as about perfect a vacation place as one could hope for.
There’s a big great room that shares space with a dining room table and kitchen and a master suite with a bed that stood so high I had to hoist Maureen atop it. It was kind of Jim and Dan to take the bedrooms downstairs.
Park City is a lot bigger these days compared to the last time I was here. Even historic Main Street, where the bars and the restaurants are located, seems stretched in all directions. Imagine the contribution that Robert Redford made to the area when he created the Sundance Film Festival. Nothing but a small town at the base of a ski mountain would be here. Instead, Park City’s a small metropolis that’s dealing with suburban sprawl.
We make our first stop the Sundance Film Festival Box Office, one of the many new buildings erected to serve tourists. A dozen ticket sellers stand ready to tell you that there are no seats to be bought – at least no seats for the films that you might want to see. Somehow, miraculously, as I’m told ticket-seeking people at Grateful Dead concerts call their quest, we are able to snag some for the next morning’s 8:30 screening of a documentary about the Arab Spring. How ironic, we’re going to see a film about Egypt at the famed Egyptian Theater.
We bring Mike to dinner in his box just the way we did on the road to Inuvik. Here at Zoom, rated Park City’s Best Restaurant by someone who publishes these kinds of things, he is not a curiosity. In fact, I get the feeling that we’re a little bush-league to be out in public like we are plugging a film with the ashes of our film’s star as the centerpiece of our table. We endure a flap with the waiter over how tiny the martinis are and then proceed to a scrumptious feast.
Maureen couldn’t have selected a more Sundance-y restaurant for our fist skirmish with alcohol, food and thin air. Photos of movie stars who played in Sundance films line the walls. All the guests are gawking in the attempt to find a live one. They won’t find one with us.
Sounds like a good time already. Anxious to know how the movie you got tickets for is.
Hi vic and maureen good luck and have fun! I can’t wait to hear more about your first Sundance.
Bit o’ advice: Zoom is one if the worst restaurants on Main Street, and that says a lot! For that rustic comfy vibe try the Distillery instead(across from the Town Lift). Order a flight of whiskeys there and you’ll REALLY have something to write about wrt Utah and liquor mores/regulations.
Vic, who is the woman in the photo?
Don’t let the waiters-who-want-to-be-actors get you down.
That beautiful blonde is Dan Johnson’s honey (wife of 41 years), Leslie Johnson. We drank your whiskey in Saratoga Springs with Dan and Leslie, Dick. Note Leslie’s wearing antlers. Wild time here at Sundance.
Antlers, Martinis, thin air and Egypt….sounds like a movie within its self! Snowy here in NYC. There’s always something magical about the snow for me. And might be the only time when NYC appears quiet. Off to babysit Charlie & Viv. Enjoy your night or I guess I should say afternoon.