The Staycation. . .

When our car broke down earlier this summer we decided that our dreams of visiting some tropical paradise over the 24th of July would have to wait. But, since Josh's Mom and Dave had volunteered to watch Ainslie while we were gone, we decided that we still needed a vacation. We just stayed a little closer to home . . .

We took one afternoon and went hiking around Sundance. We're pretty out of shape these days, so we thought it would be best if we took the easy way up to the top of the mountain.
After cutting out the difficult part of the hike, we had lots of fun walking around and taking in the beautiful scenery.
We did feel a little guilty riding to the top, so we decided we needed to do some hiking. We followed one trail out to some great views of Stewart Falls.
For some reason, while Ainslie was playing with Grandma, Grandpa, Michael and Heather, we ended up spending a lot of time eating at all the restaurants we could (Ainslie has made the last few restaurant trips a little too crazy). The first night we went to the Cheesecake Factory, and really enjoyed the food. Unfortunately, we didn't take camera. The food was beautiful.

The next morning we headed out to our favorite place for breakfast, the Blue Boar Inn.

The breakfast there is always amazing, and we had a great time remembering Switzerland while we chatted with the Innkeeper.

Could the food really be that good? We'll let these satisfied smiles speak for themselves.That afternoon we played around in Park City for a while and then headed in to Salt Lake. The Utah Museum of Fine Arts has a fantastic exhibit right now called Monet to Picasso. We highly recommend it if you can go. Looking at these amazing paintings reminded us of how much we enjoyed our time admiring the works of the Impressionists while we were in Paris last summer.

Although we had originally planned to have Ainslie spend two nights with the Reids, we gave in and went to pick her up that evening. We just missed her too much to be gone for two nights. But, we decided to squeeze one more meal in before we went to pick her up. We grabbed some sandwiches at Caputo's. Delicious.

If you're looking for colorful imported foods, try Caputo's. We had lots of fun vacationing close to home, and Ainslie had lots of fun playing with everyone in Payson. It was quite the weekend.