I do plan to go back to write about past trips I have been on over time, but I am going to start the travel section of my brand new blog with our most recent trip! For the 4th of July we went to Salt Lake City, but we went so we could go to the Monster Jam World Finals. It was a 2-day event, July 4-5th, and started at 6pm each night. Our flight left Thursday night, July 3rd and stayed at Hotel Monaco until we left on Sunday, July 6th. I went with my boyfriend, and we had a blast! He is a huge foodie, so travelling is never just about the location for us. He always is looking for the best restaurants in the area we are going to, and i’m fairly certain that vacation is the only time he actually eats 3 meals a day.
I’ll start off by telling you about the Hotel Monaco. The hotel itself is beautiful, and the staff were great. Everyone was friendly and welcoming. We had a corner room on the 8th floor with great views of the city and the mountains behind it. It was a great size, very clean, and well stocked with towels and robes. There was a restaurant on the main floor that looked very fancy, but we did not eat there during our stay. The elevators sounded a little scary, but that was the only downfall. I feel it is worth mentioning that we did not rent a car, so I don’t know what the valet/parking situation was. It was surprisingly quiet in the area, and it seemed pretty safe. The activities we did during the day (before Monster Jam started) ended up being on the other side of town, so we did Uber a few times, but we were able to walk a lot of places, too. The hotel was close to train stops that we used to get to the stadium for Monster Jam, and had some great restraints close by, too.
On our first day, we woke up and went to Eggsburgh for breakfast. I had the Southwest Omlette and my boyfriend had the South of the Border Benny. We both thoroughly enjoyed our meals. Afterwards, we went for a hike on the Living Room Trail. It’s called this because there are a bunch of “chairs” made out of rocks to sit and relax in when you get to the highest point of the trail. I love hiking, but I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m pretty out of shape. This hike kicked my ass 😅 Being from MI and having never even seen a mountain until well into my 20’s, the elevation got to me. I have never wanted to turn around so bad during a hike. Thankfully, I have a supportive boyfriend that wouldn’t let me 😉 The view from the Living Room was AMAZING! You could see all of Salt Lake, the city, and the bigger mountains around us. Some even still had snow on them. We sat in the Living Room for a while, just enjoying the views and trying out all the different chairs. In all, I think it took us 2.5ish hours. I highly recommend this if you’re the outdoorsy type in the area.
After our hike, we went back to the hotel to get ready for the night. We both showered (we were quite smelly) and relaxed for a few minutes before heading out for the night again. Our first stop was at Felt Bar & Eatery. We walked from the hotel and it happened to be our way to the train station we needed to be at to get to the stadium. We shared ceviche, some kind of ravioli, and oysters, and ordered our drinks. While the food was good, I would say our drinks were the best part of Felt. I’ll be honest, I don’t know what my boyfriend had to drink, but my first drink was called Ocean, and holy poop, batman. If there was ever a way to make me want to drink the ocean, this is it! I know it was a vodka drink, with a saltwater foam and topped with sea grapes (bet you didn’t know that was a thing 😂 I know I didn’t!). It was incredible! My second drink was called Jungle, which was a rum drink of some sort with a leaf and dehydrated lime wedge that was also really good, but not as good as the Ocean. My boyfriend’s second drink was something very fruity (I can’t remember the name of it, I wasn’t expecting to write about it on my first travel blog page 🤩), and very delicious.
After Felt, we got on the train to go to the stadium for night 1 of Monster Jam. It was actually delayed due to some inclement weather, but we actually had good seats and the stadium was not as crowded as I expected it to be when it started. We watched some racing, 2-wheel tricks, and everyone’s favorite, freestyle. They did freestyle both nights; half the drivers went on the first night, and the other half went on the second. Whoever had the best score at the end of the second night won. The winner at the end of the first night had an astonishing run! He blew out a tire pretty early into his 120 second time, and continued to run the rest of his time that way. He did better on 3 wheels than some of the other drivers did with 4. He even managed to do a backflip! It was incredible. Then when everyone was done with their runs for the day, they had all the trucks come out into the arena (when did there get to be so many Monster Trucks?) and the stadium put on a great fireworks display for everyone. I LOVE fireworks, but haven’t gone out to see any in a few years, so I was so excited about this! When we left, we got a little lost, and ended up taking the most terrifying Lyft ride back to our hotel. There was some road work that our driver thought he could just drive around? When that didn’t work, he went back the way he came from and did a random U-Turn that almost got us hit. Other than that, we had a great time.
The next morning, I had scheduled for us to go horseback riding! I rode horses in middle school, through my freshman year of college, and bought my first horse not long after I dropped out of college. Unfortunately, I had to sell my horse in 2018 to do more adult things, and horseback riding is something that I miss dearly. This is something I am so so glad we did! I never thought I would see the day my boyfriend would get on a horse (he doesn’t like them), but I think he had fun, too. I booked it through This Is The Place Park, and I really enjoyed it. It was very beginner friendly, and the staff was fun, friendly and knowledgeable about the horses and the history of Salt Lake. The horses were beautiful, mild-mannered, and well cared for. My horses name was Red and actually reminded me of one of the horses I rode in high school. We went up into the mountain a little bit for a photo op, and on the way back we ended up riding through the This Is The Place Park a little bit, which seemed like it might be fun if your into the history of the old west. Admission to the park was included with our hour-long ride, but what we saw while we were riding through was enough for us. Maybe I can convince my boyfriend to do it with me again? 🤔
When the ride was over, we walked from the barn to Utah’s Hogle Zoo. I am a sucker for a zoo, so we tend to visit them quite a bit on our vacations. Also, being the childless adults that we are, we can walk through a zoo and see everything fairly quick. I think we were in the zoo for an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Hogle Zoo is on the smaller side, but had some animals that I had never seen in a zoo before, like the Markor. They also had lions, which my local zoo does not have, so that is always exciting. Of course, I had to feed the giraffes while we were there, too. I am glad we went to the zoo, but I wouldn’t say it is a must stop if you are on a time crunch.
Our Uber back to the hotel was uneventful, thankfully, were we showered and then headed out again. We walked to the Megaplex Luxury Theatres to see Jurassic World Rebirth. I really enjoyed the movie, and the theatre was really nice. I wish we had stayed in that area for a little while longer. There was a comedy club and a few restaurants, with some shopping, too. The outside space was really cute with swings and bulb lights, and one part even had a colorful fabric strip “roof” that blew nicely in the wind and provided a little bit of shade. On our walk back to the hotel, we stopped into a gift shop (one thing about me, I buy a t-shirt everywhere we go). We had dinner reservations at HandoSake Sushi at 4:15, where we had some fantastic sushi. Being just a few shops down from the hotel, it was a short walk. We went early enough that we beat the dinner rush and got all of our food pretty quickly. We took the train to the stadium again, and when we got there, it was much busier than the first night (the weather was better, too). They finished the races and did the high jump competition, and finished the night with the freestyle again. There were good runs, and the overall freestyle winner ran that night, but my boyfriend and I thought the guy from the first night on 3 wheels should have won the whole thing.
After Monster Jam, we decided to explore a little bit of the night life, a.k.a., the arcade bar a few blocks from our hotel 😂 It was our last night in the city, and my boyfriend loves pinball, so arcades are another thing that we often do during our travels. He’s really good at it and I enjoy it every once in a while. Occasionally, I can even win a game against him. I beat him at one game of Total Nuclear Annihilation! My score was 269.77 and he had 33.14. We were there for a little over an hour, and walked back to the hotel. This was the only time I was a little uncomfortable during our time in Salt Lake, but we did stop to watch a magician that had set up a small card table on the side walk that was teaching some guys how to do a card trick.
We left early the next morning to come home. TSA was quick, and I had stopped to get a snack and a new book. I had finished my other book on our flight there, and it will be my next book review. I had the window seat, and got to see all the beautiful landscape while we watched Death of a Unicorn. When the movie was over, I took a nap, and didn’t even start my new book. Over all, I was very impressed by Salt Lake City! It was clean and quiet for a city and the weather was perfect. I wish we had stayed longer and had done horse back riding somewhere a little more remote, but I think a Southern Utah Nation Park trip is in our future!
