A Weekend at the Homestead
A few weekends ago, my parents treated our entire family to a weekend stay at The Homestead Resort in Midway. My Mom remembers staying here with her parents when she was little, and has some great memories from it. So, she wanted all of us to have some of those memories too. It was such a fun weekend! We went up on Friday afternoon after the kids were done with school and checked into our rooms. If you're not familiar with The Homestead, most their hotel rooms are in these cute little cottages. Some of the cottages are over 100 years old. Each one is divided into three rooms. Our family's room was in Willow Wood Cottage. Here's a picture of it. We were in the bottom floor unit. There were two queen beds, plus a big window seat, which Cohen and Viv ended up using for their bed, pictured later in the post)...
When we first got up there, we explored the resort a little bit..
Then, we went swimming. The resort has both an outdoor and an indoor pool. We started in the outdoor pool...
But, didn't last very long because it was so chilly. The weather was unseasonably cold the whole time we were there, but especially so on the first day. So, we moved to the indoor pool. We made great use of that indoor pool throughout the weekend...
That evening, we went to a really yummy Italian restaurant called Cafe Galleria. They had great wood fired pizza, pasta and sandwiches. Everyone left with their tummies stuffed! We went back to the resort and watched the RSL game on TV, and then went to bed to the sound of rain falling outside. It was heavenly! Here's our sleeping arrangements that I mentioned above...
Ninja poses...
The next morning, Poppy and Mike went on a ride. They had planned to do some mountain biking, but all the rain the day before had made everything too muddy, so they just did some road biking with their mountain bikes. They headed up Guardsman's Pass with the intent of just going until they got cold, but they ended up riding all the way to the top...
The view from the top of Guardman's Pass looking back toward the Heber Valley...
It's a pretty impressive climb! The maximum grade at one point was 27% and it climbed from 5400 feet to 8500 feet in just over five miles! It was a great training ride for them to do a few weeks before LOTOJA...
While they were gone, the rest of us explored the resort a little more. There is a crater with a hot spring inside on the resort property, so we climbed to the top of that...
Then explored the rest of the grounds...
Besties...
We eventually decided to drive into Park City and go to the Utah Olympic Park. There were people doing jumps off the training jumps, so we watched them for awhile...
Then headed over to the park/little ropes course to play a little, and also watch people going down the zipline...
Dan was spinning the boys on this thing and ended up dumping himself off...
Then we went into the 2002 Winter Olympics Museum for awhile...
And took lots of pictures like this...
And had lots of fun with all the hands on exhibits too...
Then, we met up with Poppy and Mike at Dairy Keen in Heber for some lunch. In the afternoon, the guys all went golfing at the course on the resort...
While they were gone, the girls took the kids swimming again...
That evening, we sort of split up. Kristin, Dan and Landon packed their bags and left because they had a work party to go to that evening. Sosha and Greg's family went to Kneaders for dinner because they just wanted something simple. And, the rest of us went to a Mexican restaurant called Tarahumara. It was great! They had a salsa bar, with just about every kind of salsa you could imagine--some that were pretty darn hot, to say the least. After dinner, the guys took the kids swimming once again. See, I told you we took full advantage of that indoor pool! Viv had fallen asleep on the way home from dinner, so I took her back to our room to sleep. Nana and Sosha came over to hang out with me while she slept.
The next morning was our last at The Homestead. We walked around the grounds a little more, visiting the crater one last time...
The view from the top of the crater. Midway is such a beautiful little town...
Then the kids decided to take pictures anywhere they could around the resort...
The parents even got in on the picture-taking action as well...
Sweet Vivvie eating a cookie on Nana and Poppy's little porch outside their room...
We went inside the crater to watch people scuba diving in the hot spring for a little while...
And then, it was time to say goodbye to our cute little cottage...
On the way home, we stopped at Bridal Veil Falls for a few minutes...
The kids had a great time feeding the fish. Those fish were huge...
Then we walked down the trail a ways...
The entire family (minus the Walker clan)...
It was such a great weekend! We loved every second of it!! A huge thank you to my parents for making it possible. We had so much fun! Love you guys!! --Lindsay
