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.
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!
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!
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.
The resort building had a front lobby with things to do. The Tea Owls had a game of chess.
We also attended a Wine & Cheese party!
They also had complimentary hot water and tea, all Liptons. This is why I bring my own tea when I travel.
Since it was off season, we had plenty of downtime. Black Tea Owl worked on a puzzle.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As I said earlier, I got into trouble at the outlet mall. I came home with cute owl mugs!
and tea towels! Squeeeee owl tea towels!
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)
