October 2018 - Family & Halloween

We continued October the way we finished September (September 2018 post), by enjoying the Fall Foliage 🍁 Utah is known for, together with my parents.

While the kids were @ school and Geert @ work, I took them up the 'Farmington Creek trail', which leads to a beautiful waterfall. To get to the base of the waterfall, you need to descend via a rope. I've done this hike before with the spouses, and not all of them dared to do this descent ... my parents of 73 and 74 did!! 👊

Going down

What goes down, must come up again 😆

Along the way, you have gorgeous views into the canyon and the valley, ...

Views into the canyon

View on the valley, with the salt lake in the back

.. and you see some old wrecks of cars that plummeted off the small mountain pass road, located about 100 feet above the trail. The father of a lady in our street was one of the rescuers working in that canyon more than 50 years ago. She told us it were often young people going up there to drink (mormon kids 😇??), underestimating the narrow and hazardous road going back down. Sad, but it does give fun picture opportunities now! 😏

I also took them to Antelope Island ... of course! I already took them there during their visit in December 2016, but everything was covered with snow back then. It gave a surreal and beautiful snowscape (Post December 2016), but no hikes were possible. Reason enough to return with them to this place that just never bores me!
We did the 'Dooley Knob Trail', named after John Dooley who relocated a dozen bison to the island in 1893, the seed of today's herd of approximately 500 to 700 bison ... which is one of the largest free roaming herds of American bisons in the US. Now why is the island not called 'Bison Island' instead of 'Antelope Island' I can hear you thinking! The island received its name from the large herds of pronghorns they found there, almost 50 years before the bisons were brought to the island. Its Latin name 'Antilocapra americana' means 'American goat-antelope' ... it is however not a family of the antelope family, and not related to the antelopes found in Africa! Today there are still around 200 pronghorns on the island.

Dooley Knob is a short peak, reachable for anybody in any shape, and on it's summit you get a nice view on the Wasatch mountain front and the Great Salt Lake.

On their way up

View from the summit

The models The photographer

On the way down

Typical view of the island with a herd of bisons (the black dots) and the Wasatch front in the back

The day after my dad's birthday,

I took them to my favourite canyon close to Salt Lake City, Big Cottonwood Canyon, to do the 'Donut Falls Trail'. It's an easy hike of ±5 km, leading to a waterfall. The hike starts at about 2200m elevation, so it was pretty cold (almost freezing) when we got there in the morning and the higher mountain tops had a promising layer of snow on them (yes, we are looking forward to the skiing season!). But there was enough sun and beautiful views to keep us warm 😊!

First part of the hike is paved

You can hike up the waterfall (at own risk), but I didn't do that with my parents

Going back, following the water from the waterfall for a while

The promising layer of snow! 🎿

The typical Aspen trees from Utah with gorgeous fall colours in the back

A week later it was mom's birthday. However, the picture where she blows her candles is not to be posted due to 'curlers in the hair' 😏. That evening Geert got the opportunity to take 3 of us shooting with somebody from work. The kids were thrilled and my dad didn't know how to feel about it, but went anyway with the thought 'once in a life time' in his head.

'opa' in action

Which left my mam and me home alone, so we made ourselves some margaritas and celebrated her birthday with my mom's new favourite drink (a 'margrietje' as she calls it).

If you want to learn a bit more about the Mormon church aka 'The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints or LDS (not LSD, that's something entirely different! 😜)', you're at the right place here in Utah! About 60% of the Utahns and 88%!!🙊 of Utah legislators are LDS members.

To get some insight in this (for many people unknown and maybe mysterious) religion, I recommend a visit to their 'Conference Center' in Salt Lake City. As I said before (Post August 2018), since 9/11 you cannot visit it anymore without a guide, but it's for free, and you don't have to be afraid that they'll try to convert you 😅!

My parents definitely enjoyed it.

On the roof with our guide with the LDS temple in the back

As I said before, on the roof of the Conference Center, you also get a nice view on the LDS temple. Another place to get a great view on the temple is from the 'Joseph Smith Memorial Building'. On top of that building is a (Mormon 👉🏻 no wine!) restaurant with a killer view. But apparently the food isn't that good, it's pretty expensive, and as you can't even flush it with some wine, I wouldn't recommend it. Luckily, you can go to the top level of the building for free and enjoy the view without going to the restaurant:

I would expect it to look gorgeous at sunset!

For a view from down below, most people see go to Temple Square, but personally I prefer it's view from N Main St:

We also had a few rainy days, which we spent in the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium of Salt Lake City with the kids, and in the Hill Aerospace Museum with just my parents. Both of them were really worth the visit!

Another fun thing to do with bad weather for the whole family is bowling. I mean, who doesn't like the combination of throwing things over with big balls in combination with some beer and unhealthy food? 😏

'Opa' in action

And of course we had our daily life going on into which my parents loved to blend in. With 2 boys playing soccer, soccer takes a big place in our daily life 😑.

But we're talking about soccer with a view here ... in a comfy chair with blankets 😆.

Hanging around at our porch, definitely part of our daily life here

On the 14th of October, my parents returned to Belgium. To add some drama ... It will be almost 2 years before I will see them again. That is in real live though, because we do see each other every week through FaceTime of course.

Last family picture before the goodbye

The next day I immediately picked up my activities with the spouses again, and I took them on the same hike (Farmington Creek Trail) I did with my parents.

Almost 2 weeks after my parents left, we made a trip to New York. The kids had a long weekend, it was almost Hendrik's birthday, and New York was already on our to do list for a long time ... what more reasons do you need?

I'll cover this trip in a separate post later on.

As it is gaining popularity in Europe the last years, I guess most people know by now that October 31st it's Halloween, which origins dates back from the ancient Celtic festival of 'Samhain' in Ireland. According to their Druid religion, November 1st was New Year on their calendar, and the spirits of all who had died that past year would rise up and roam the earth the night before. People would dress up ugly and scary, made their homes as inhospitable as possible, and put food and candy outside, in the hope that the evil spirits would leave them alone. They would also carve out turnips, and place embers in them to ward off the evil spirits. It were Irish immigrants who introduced this Halloween rite to the States in the 1840s.

It's really big here in the States. Kids put on a scary costume and go 'trick or treating' from door to door. Don't take it too literally though, the 'trick' is not considered an option, you're really expected to give them a 'treat' 😏

Many houses are given a 'haunted treatment' to make this night extra scary for the kids (or to scare of the evil spirits 🤨? . And some people take this very serious!

In comparison with the above, we kept it very simple! We just carved some pumpkins,...

... decorated our windows,...

... and added an unexpected attribute on the porch!

The latter wasn't our intention, but as the toilet bowl broke the day before, at least it could serve a little bit longer this way. 😜

So the bowl broke while the kids were home alone ... which made for some hilarious scenes by the way ... imagine 2 teenager boys on the floor, trying to mop the water coming out of the toilet with all the towels they could find in the house! They were literally 'mopping with the tap open' as our flemish expression says. Closing the tap, never came to their mind 🙄

During the day, I had a coffee with the spouses, also inspired by the Halloween spirit of course .