Skiing Sun Valley

And… it’s 2019.

I had a Mountain Collective pass this year, which included two free days (I mean, free once you buy the pass) at each of Snowbasin, Snowbird, Alta, Jackson Hole, Big Sky, Squaw Valley, Mammoth, Taos maybe?, somewhere in Alberta, probably a couple other places, and Sun Valley.

I’d never been to Sun Valley before. It’s not that far away. I decided to make the trip.

It turns out that Sun Valley is the place to go if you want an east coast skiing experience without having to leave the intermountain west. The snow was fake and hard and good edges were all-important.

They don’t get enough snow there. IMHO. Here’s the artwork that was hanging up in my motel:

In which the place’s lack of snow has been memorialized as if it’s a good thing. The photo shows (a) which runs have snow-making and (b) what runs without snow-making look like. Neat.

Anyway, here are a couple photos, then I’ll complain more.

• Unlike skiing back east, there’s some actual steep terrain here.
• Which, given east coast-quality snow, isn’t much of a virtue.
• They have a lot of chair lifts once you get out of the base area.
• There were a surprising number of tourists there. Just that: it costs less to fly to Salt Lake or Denver or probably costs the same to get to Big Sky or Whitefish or a lot of places that are way better than this.
• No one should spend a lot of money to ski at this place. There are way better options that cost less.

The worst part about Sun Valley was the regulars. If you ever want to see what 70-year-old trust-fund kids look like, this is your place. So much plastic surgery there and toupees there. Weird, weird scene. The random lift strangers, the locals at least, have a trust-fund attitude to match. They’re intensely crusty. Cranky, unhappy to meet you, and mad that you’re on their chair lift.

Sun Valley was like Pennsylvania’s snow with Aspen’s regulars (and, to be fair, Montana’s steeps). That’s not really an ideal resort.

Good luck with that ice chunk of a mountain.

bkd

Bend > Tacoma > Red Lodge > Cache Valley > Blog Post

These blog posts are pretty perfunctory. Go somewhere, post about it a year later because you feel like you have to. One day I’ll look back at all these posts and understand how I never had the time to become an astronaut.

On the last full day I was in Bend, Aela and I hiked to the Blue Pool, which isn’t all that close to Bend and was swarming with people. This is the best photo I took.

This was (is) apparently the McKenzie River, but it is not the actual Blue Pool itself. The actual pool has a bunch of people standing around it and is a little deeper. Imagine!

Anyway, then we took off. On our way out of Bend, we stopped at Smith Rock State Park, which would be a great place to visit if you were in to rock climbing, which I am not.

Sun’s out, tongue’s out. Amiright?? Mostly she was just happy to not be in the car. I got the one dog in the universe who doesn’t like riding in cars. Although, TBF, it might just be that she doesn’t like riding in cars for so long.

On the way to Tacoma, we stopped by some other place around Mt. Hood that was stuffed full of people.

We then stayed in an oddly expensive hotel in Gresham near a wireless pastry place.

And then here’s how my dog behaves in hotel rooms:

Ever vigilant.

Anyway, then headed up to NE Tacoma where the dog could interact with some of her cousins.

Then from Tacoma, I was kind of interested in looking at an investment property in Red Lodge, Mont., because I like Red Lodge, Mont. On the way we stopped in, I think, Kellogg, Idaho? I dunno. It was a very cheap motel and there were a lot of bikers.

Just outside of town we went on some hike that celebrated the rescuing of a bunch of firefighters that got caught up on the mountain during the fire of 1923, when a guy found a mining tunnel as a way to get his group of people underneath the fire.

Interesting story. Not a lot to photograph though. This might’ve been the mine entrance:

And then we got to Red Lodge and I found a real estate agent that showed me a bunch of just really badly designed townhouses. There was one with reasonably nice finishes, but insanely badly placed windows (like the bottoms were all five feet off the ground). Plus the kitchen was upstairs for no good reason.

We traveled on the way back via the Beartooth Highway, which is one of the better highways in the world (from a scenery perspective at least).

Somewhere along that highway, we got out and walked down a ravine toward a river.

Or maybe it was a lake. I dunno. There was a creek involved. At one point the dog had to swim six feet to get to me, which was the first time she’d ever swam. So, you know.

And then, because Google Maps is stupid and because I’m stupid for believing Google maps, we passed through Yellowstone on the way home because that was “faster”.

Holy crap, people, just use the turn-outs.

And when we got home, it turned out that the UPS guy had finished hanging the drywall in the kitchen.

Anyway,

bkd

Revisiting Places Where I Used to Live: Twin Falls

Driving up to Boise to see the Modest Mouse concert in September gave me keen opportunity to drive through Twin Falls, a place where I used to live. Hence the post title. I also drove through Rupert, where I lived for like a week before moving to Twin (as the locals call it). In Rupert, I *think* I found the building where I worked for that week — the former headquarters of SafeLink Internet. In Twin… somehow I didn’t get around to finding the low-income apartment I used to live in. But I found the gas station where my closet-office was. (I did not go inside.)

Here’s the money shot of the bridge going over the Snake River Gorge, near where Evel Kenievel (sp, whatever) failed.

• I felt nothing going through here. I remembered some of the street names, but beyond that, it felt like Any Other Mountain-West Town.
• Like, I remember having strong (non-positive) feelings about this place when I lived here.
• OTOH, there’s a lot of new retail in town.
• And, in general, it didn’t seem like such a bad place (to drive through and not necessarily live in).
• I was here on a french fry odor day, which was nice.
• Also, the amount of construction on I-84 was remarkable.
• Memories didn’t exactly come flooding back when driving through Rupert, either.

^^ The freeway in Idaho looks like this (except in spots where there are cones everywhere).

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Saw Modest Mouse in Concert Twice

It’s like an Onion article: the headline is the whole story.

Saw them in June in Salt Lake with my Aunt Mitzie, then again in September in Boise with myself. Salt Lake had a better play list, but I liked the Boise venue better. Now what?

• I like that they don’t ever play the same set list twice and that, at both concerts, there were heavy doses of songs from older albums (more from Moon and Antarctica in SLC, more from Lonesome, Crowded West in Boise).
• Set list overlap between the two concerts was probably 50-60%.
• It was interesting the extent to which they just sounded like a loud, angry rock band, especially on songs that don’t sound all that loud or angry on the albums (e.g., Tiny Cities Made of Ashes, Tortoise and the Tourist).
• Favorite performed song was Dark Center of the Universe (in SLC). Very loud, very angry.
• Particularly from their later albums, the “un-produced” sound of the live performances were in many cases way better than what ended up on the albums (e.g., Satin in a Coffin, Sugar Boats, Devil’s Workday, Invisible).
• OTOH, some of my favorites that they played came across kind of lame live (Trailer Trash, Out of Gas).
• The SLC was some sort of converted warehouse; in Boise, they played at the single-A baseball team’s stadium (was cold).
• Far more concertgoers in SLC spent the entire concert taking photos/video with their phones than in Boise.
• I was about the median age at both concerts.

Here’s a photo, after which this life event will be considered recorded.

bkd