Oolong Owl’s Hooty Tea Travels – Park City Utah October 2015

I recently got back from Utah. My Mother-in-law, Grandmother-in-law and I went up to Park City Utah for a week and stayed at my GIN’s timeshare in a mountain resort just below the ski lifts.

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Park City is the location for the Sundance Film Festival, 2 ski resorts, and was major locations of the 2002 Winter Olympics. However, I was in Park City in October, in between the major tourist seasons so there wasn’t much going on besides a whole lot of construction/repair and seasonal residents coming back for ski season. You can see all the grassy ski hills!

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Park City has some good shopping – a killer outlet mall, a couple shopping hubs and a cute downtown. Before going I looked up all the tea and yarn shops and planned out the days I’d visit.

For my trip I was going by car so I could pack.. well… everything I needed tea wise. I packed my Bonvita Variable Temperature Kettle, DavidsTea in mug infuser, scale, Libre Tea Glass, travel gaiwan set, and a whole lot of tea. I had an adventure making tea up in the mountains. I first tasted and researched the water – it was drinkable but really hard and mineral tasting. Hard flavorful water wasn’t going to work for me, especially since I had tea with me that I was going to review, so I bought spring water. My set up!

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It didn’t register at first – my kettle refused to go past 198F. It would just never get to 212F and then out glitch out and shut off. My Bonvita is kinda glitchy but not that glitchy. I checked up and Park City is at 7500 feet of elevation, thus boiling was at a different temperature. So now I’m brewing at a really high altitude, with spring water. My tea totally tasted sweeter, especially the shou pu’er I drank.  I drank a lot of tea, it was great tasting though the brewing was off as I had no idea what temperature I was steeping things at!

Our time share was a 3 bedroom set up that could easily sleep 10 people with two double beds, hide-a-bed, plus my room which had 4 bunk beds. The Tea Owls took the top bunk and hung out with a new friend.

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The resort building had a front lobby with things to do. The Tea Owls had a game of chess.

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We also attended a Wine & Cheese party!

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They also had complimentary hot water and tea, all Liptons. This is why I bring my own tea when I travel.

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Since it was off season, we had plenty of downtime. Black Tea Owl worked on a puzzle.

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There was a great Farmer’s Market on Wednesday – the food was amazing! The black berries were super delicious and I came back with an amazing cinnamon bun and fruit pastry!

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hooty tea travels - park city - Oolong Owl (16) I regret not getting any good pictures of main street downtown. There was just too much construction going on. There is a tea shop downtown – Atticus – which is a coffee, teahouse and used book store.

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It was mostly a coffee shop style to get a hot drink or sandwich, then hang out. The used books were fair priced. I didn’t get any tea to take home as there wasn’t anything interesting that called to me.

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I had planned to visit another tea shop – Wasatch Tea Company. Their website said they do their own tea blends! This is the kind of tea shop I was looking for and I wanted the real local tea. However, upon arriving I found out they recently closed shop and turning it into a bakery.

I got into a whole lot of trouble at the Outlet mall buying lots of clothes. I also visited the local yarn shop experienced brain overload on what to buy.

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For our last day we visited the Olypmic museum. Fitness Owl watched the skiers practice jumps at the pool.

Neat tea finds in Park City

I didn’t get too much tea related things compared to Alaska. Park City is totally a ski town so it was mostly tourist shirts and ski equipment. I did find TEA CHEESE! I bought one and took it home to California! I also got an interesting brown sugar jerk seasoned cheese. There was also lavender espresso cheese but I thought it was too strange of a cheese, but turns out it has won a bunch of awards.

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At main street’s Mountain Olive Oil co I found Raft Smoked Tea Vanilla with recipes! I’m not one for cocktails, but these look interesting. I make my own vanilla at home so I’m wondering if I could make tea vanilla? Hmmmm. They also have a Hibiscus Lavender syrup.

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As I said earlier, I got into trouble at the outlet mall. I came home with cute owl mugs!

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and tea towels! Squeeeee owl tea towels!

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In all, Park City was a good trip. I could see the town being more action packed during the season. I spent most of it shopping the outlet mall, knitting/crocheting, eating, drinking tea, and walking around.

(amazon affiliate links for tea ware)

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