March 2020 will definitely be a memorable month thanks to the many special moments , but also as it ended up being our last full month in Utah! Little did we know though when the month started.
March 2nd is Geert's birthday, and as there were some Belgian and Portuguese colleagues of him in town, we celebrated it with a dinner @ our place.
On March 4th we had our annual International Buffet, which is a free event where the international community working at Hill Airforce share their food, drinks and culture with their American and International colleagues and friends. I organised it this years and it was a fun, and sometimes challenging experience. It was a lot of work as it's pretty big event with a turnout of about 500 people, but it was so worth it as it was a huge succes! Luckily the by now well known party pooper 'Corona' was not yet 'in the house', or all our efforts would have been in vain.
I got some unexpected helpers during the preparation of the venue
Some of the international community, like Japan & Chile, were absolutely gorgeous in their traditional outfit! 😍
The international crew
The usual suspects of the international crew with whom we closed the event with a drink (or 2) at the bar.
As it is a free event, a silent auction and raffle are organised each year during the event to help cover the costs, but this year I also created a cookbook with traditional recipes of all the international countries stationed at Hill Airforce base which we would sell during the event. I spent most of my Christmas holiday on it, but I am pretty happy with the outcome 😊.
March 10 my sister arrived for a 2 week stay with just hand luggage 😳. Extensive shopping was clearly part of her planning! At that time Corona was already raging through Italy, but only slowly making his entry into other parts of the world ... we naively thought it was never going to impact that planning.🤦🏼♀️
On her first day, we already took her for a long hike up to Frairy peak at Antelope Island, which is a pretty streneous hike and maybe not the best choice as a first activity after such a long trip. That would indeed be the case for a normal person, but my sister is a beast, so she did better than fine 👊.
View on 'our' Wasatch mountains (the edge of the Rocky Mountains at the mainland) from the causeway towards Antelope Island
On the way up, again with the Wasatch mountains in the back
Both my sister & me are afraid of heights, so the last steep part which was covered with snow was almost a showstopper (don't let our smiles fool you, we were NOT enjoying this part! 😆)
Picture at the top ... these smiles are genuine ones, smiles of relief!
On the way down
Typical view at Antelope Island: a herd of bizons with the Wasatch mountains in the background
For the next few days, we took her skiing. My sister has already done a lot of special things in her 49 years, but skiing isn't one of them. To prepare herself, she took a few lessons (in her jeans! 😆) on an indoor ski slope, but this would be her first time in the mountains, on real snow. Oh man did we have fun! She turned out to be a fast learner who was open to any challenge ... which led to some hilarious situations!The jeans was replaced by one of my ski pants 😅
Her ski experience would not be complete without a tailgate!
We had some more ski days on our agenda, but Corona was interfering with our plans. We were supposed to go skiing Sunday afternoon, but Sunday at noon Snowbasin unexpectedly decided to close its doors for the rest of the season! Signs (placed, ill-considered, on the highway 🤦🏼♀️) were telling us one thing, but everything around us was telling us a whole different story! Schools closed, Geert had to start working from home, and people started stockpiling, leading to empty shelves in the supermarkets ... we started to realise that my sisters further stay here might be in jeopardy.
On March 16 we therefore decided to cancel the already made reservations to Moab for later that month and made new reservations for that same day! We quickly packed some things and off we went with the 2 of us. We were just in time to catch the sunset at Delicate Arch @ Arches National Park. No filters added!
Delicate Arch
The next morning we got up really early to catch the 'signature' sunrise of Mesa Arch @ the 'Island In the Sky' district of Canyonlands National Park, located at 40 minutes from Moab. The sun rises from behind Mesa Arch and, as it reaches the level of the arch, the reflections of the sun beams create a magical starburst effect under the arch. There were too many clouds to get that effect, but it was pretty nevertheless.Mesa Arch
Next stops in Canyonlands were Green River Overlook & the Grand View Point Overlook. The Green River Overlook point sits around 6,000 feet (1800 meter) and gives viewers an excellent view of the Green River meandering through the expansive Soda Springs Basin.
Green River Overlook
At the Grand View Point Overlook (Southern-most point @ the Island in the Sky district), we hiked down the mesa's edge with a complex network of the Green River and Colorado River canyons laid out below. Both rivers converge more south in the Needles district of Canyonlands where it becomes 1 big Colorado River.At the mesa's edge of Grand View Point Overlook
End point of the trail that start at Grand View Point Overlook
On our way back to Arches National Park, we made a quick stop at Dead Horse Point State Park because the spectacular vista at the end of the scenic drive through the park, is just not to be missed!Famous view at Dead Horse Point on the Colorado river
At Arches we did the Devils Garden trail, which is a fun trail to the Double O Arches, where you can see exactly what the name of the park suggests ... Arches, 7 of them: Tunnel Arch, Pine Tree Arch, Landscape Arch, Private Arch, Navajo Arch, Partition Arch and Double O Arch. We skipped the first 2, and the Navajo Arch as they are located on spur trails, and apparently not really that impressive compared to the rest of them (now that I'm back in Belgium, I would probably hike with pleasure for hours just to get a glimpse of 'less impressive' arches like that 😏). We took the Primitive trail on the way there which is maybe a bit more adventurous than the main trail due to the fact that it's a less designated (you need to look for cairns, put there by previous hikers, to find your way) trail, and there is some scrambling on slick rock and some degree of exposure on ledges.A short spur trail of the primitive route brings you to Private Arch. Definitely not the most impressive one of the bunch, but when you continue on top of the fin behind the arch, you do get an amazing view on the clusters of towering, narrow fins through which you hike on this primitive route towards Double O Arch. Private Arch
View on the fins
Inside the finsFrom there we continued to Double O Arch. Make sure you climb through the arch, because otherwise you miss out on the best view!
Double O ArchWhen you look at the picture above, you probably wonder why it is called 'Double O Arch', but that's just because I (unconsciously) positioned myself strategically right in front of the lower arch 😏.
We returned via the main trail where at some point you have to cross a narrow sandstone slab from where you have a great view on the fins below through which we hiked on our way up. In the back you see the fins which we hiked on our way up
View to the other side on the narrow sandstone slab
The next Arch on our list was Partition Arch, located on a short spur trail of the main route, after which we continued via a slickrock ramp downwards via Landscape Arch back to the car. I refer to a previous post in this blog for pictures of the last 2 arches (July 2019). After this hike we drove back home. There is so much more to see and do in Arches or Canyonlands National Park, but I think we were able to get the best out of this short trip!
The next morning we got literally shaken out of our bed by a 5.7 magnitude earthquake. My first thought was that a big truck had hit the house, but when the shaking continues, you start realising something else is going on. Pretty scary! Luckily we had no damage at all. The area where we live is located on an active (earthquake) fault, so you can expect to be shaken up once in a while, but there hadn't been one above magnitude 5 since 1992. Talking about an eventful trip for my sister!
Anyway, back to the other natural disaster my sister seemed to have booked on her trip... the Corona virus... Slowly but surely the different counties in Utah were closing their restaurants, and traveling outside of the state was discouraged. It became very clear that my sister had to return back to Belgium asap if she didn't want to get stuck here. She was already informed that one part of her flight was canceled, so she decided to book another, earlier flight back home. We quickly did one last trip with her to the Bonneville Salt Flats to end her shortened trip in beauty.
The Bonneville Salt Flats are a 30,000 acre expanse of hard, white salt crust on the western edge of the Great Salt Lake basin in Utah, where each year professional and amateur teams from around the world compete for land speed records. The last record set at the salt flats was on October 23, 1970, when Gary Gabelich's rocket-powered car peaked at 1,014.656kph! Andy Green holds the record today since 1997, with a twin turbofan jet-powered car at 1,227.986kph (the first ever supersonic land speed record by the way). This didn't take place at the Bonneville Salt Flats however, but at Nevada's Black Rock Desert instead. In fact, the last 3 outright land speed world records were set at Black Rock.
But even when there are no spectacular races going on, it's definitely worth a visit because of its otherworldly landscape!
Since part of the salt flats were covered with a layer of water, we saw the most beautiful mirror reflections!
All this beauty is easily accessible by car, but as we rented a 4x4 Truck for this trip, we just had to go a bit off road of course 😏.
Before heading back home we drove up to West Wendover, a (now deserted due to Corona) gambling town just across the border in Nevada, 5 minutes from the Salt Flats, to cure our hunger pains.
On the way back we got some more beautiful views, ...
... and the most bizarre cloud formations.That same day in the late afternoon we dropped off my sister at the airport. Little did we know at that moment that 2.5 weeks later we would be there again for our own return back to Belgium! We were supposed to return home somewhere in June, but with so many domestic and international flights being canceled already (and the peak of the virus was definitely not here yet), and the fear that big moves like ours were not going to be allowed anymore, it was obvious that an early return came to mind. And it seemed that all factors were in favour to this decision: Our house in Belgium was available ✅
The schools were not planning to reopen again, and the boys could continue their school online from Belgium ✅
Dito for Geert's work ✅
The trips we still had planned for our last months here were not going to be possible anymore ✅
➡️ 📦 🚚 🛫 🛬 🚉 🚘 🏡
So a week after my sister had left, the decision was taken to move back as quickly as possible. We managed to do just that 1,5 weeks after we took that decision. It were a crazy 1,5 weeks!! An international move like that just takes a lot of organisation. I think we made a record within the Belgian Defense to get that done in such a short time!
Needless to say that the rest of the month was spent at prepping this unexpected change of plans. On the last day of March, the moving company would start packing our household, so there was no time to waste.
A sad consequence of such a fast move, is that there's not really time to say goodbye properly, and the pandemic was not helping in that department neither 😞.
You can imagine how moved and happy I was that the many people we can call our friends after this 4 year adventure, found ways to make that goodbye happen after all. On March 30th, the day before the moving company would start packing, the international community surprised me (yes me, because Geert was in on it) with a drive-by goodbye. Although our departure was only foreseen for a week later, they already made this happen at that moment, so we would be able to put their gifts in the container together with our household. It was the best goodbye I could have wished for!!
After the drive-“bye” some people even stayed a bit in our front yard to have a 'safe' drink together. The next morning, the last day of March, the moving company arrived and started packing everything that wasn't marked by us with ❌ (=not to be moved). Otherwise they would pack literally everything that isn't attached to the floor, ceiling or wall in boxes! April was going to become a very special month for us.
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