Park City, Utah in the Fall

So, originally we were supposed to go to Cabo in April to celebrate my 40th birthday but Covid messed that up so it was cancelled. Then I got brave and decided to rebook the same trip for our 18th anniversary in September. About two weeks before our trip I went to dig out or passports and after tearing our house to shreds, discovered I had lost them. Aye Aye Aye. Since those offices aren’t even open currently and you can only get your passports by mail, we had no choice but to cancel and figure out a U.S. location for our trip. A friend at Crossfit is always going on about how amazing Park City, UT is so I asked her for some info and got to booking. We were traveling in mid September so no snow, but the leaves we changing for fall and as a Texan who doesn’t normally get to experience that, it was absolutely beautiful.

Location:

We stayed at the St. Regis Deer Valley https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/slcxr-the-st-regis-deer-valley which was absolute heaven. The rates are substantially lower in the fall making it affordable for us (around $350 a night), unfortunately I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to afford the $2400ish Christmastime price tag. I’m sure it’s magical though. We stayed in a “Valley View” room which had a large shared balcony with a few other rooms. At the time there wasn’t anyone staying in those rooms though so we had it to ourselves. Two other very beautiful hotels were The Stein Eriksen Lodge http://www.steinlodge.com and The Monatge https://www.montagehotels.com/deervalley/ although the entire area of Park City is very upscale and I doubt there’s a bad place to stay there.

I learned a long time ago that if you get to stay in a really nice hotel to book something/anything in the spa, it will be totally worth it. My husband always wants to take a nap after traveling and checking in so I booked my massage for right after we arrived. Since it was Wednesday I had the entire spa to myself. My massage room had an open door with a waterfall just outside. I was a little speechless when the lady walked me in. I had an excellent deep tissue massage and then went in hung out in the steam room for a while. Steam rooms are my favorite, probably just because they’re kind of few and far between in my experience.

Activities:

Let me just say that there is a TON to do in Utah in the summer/fall. There are probably thousands of hiking trails, lakes, rivers for fishing or rafting, ATV tours, waterfalls, and Main St. for shopping. We were there Wed-Sun and once we were there I wished we were staying for a full week. Our first activity was a hike on Lake Mary Trail. The trail begins in the Brighton Resort parking lot. It’s only about a 2 mile hike to the lake but its 100% uphill on the way there. So if you’re from sea level be prepared to take a few breaks and bring plenty of water. Also side note there are very few gas stations and drug stores in Park City so I would suggest stocking up on either free waters from the hotel or getting something from the hotel store. We only ended up with the two waters the valet had handed us so we had to ration and ended up very thirsty. Thankfully I had thrown the trail mix they offered me at the spa earlier in my backpack because that ended up being our picnic snack on the hike. Lake Mary was so pretty it was one of those moments that don’t feel real, like you’re in a postcard.

Later that afternoon we went to The Homestead Crater https://homesteadresort.com/utah-resort-things-to-do/homestead-crater/ which is 10,000 years old, 55 feet deep and around 96 degrees. you just have to call 435-657-3840 and make a reservation to visit it. It was a really cool experience to swim in something so different.

The next day we went on an ATV (side by side) tour through the Wasatch Mountains. Talk about cool. Two hours of riding through the trails on the mountains and stopping to take in some amazing views from the top. Our guide was super cool and took tons of awesome photos of us without me even having to ask. The company is https://wasatchexcursions.com/

Our guide on the ATV tour suggested we drive out through the Wasatch National Forest to Mirror Lake the next day. My husband was really enjoying driving around the area and we hadn’t gone in that direction yet. Just driving 30 mins in each direction there were different types of mountains and totally different trees, really cool to see. There was a cold front coming through and when we arrived it was 45 degrees and sleeting! We were not that upset about taking a small nap in the car at that point in our trip and waited for the rain to slow down. I wasn’t expecting it to be 20 degrees colder at the lake but had luckily just bought my daughter a Park City hoodie that I was able to stuff myself into. If you park in the picnic and boat launch area there is a walking trail that goes all the way around the lake. We walked in one direction and then the freezing rain started up again, of course when we got back to the parking lot the sun came out. Then we ended up walking the opposite direction around the lake and I was so glad because it looked completely different, with views of mountains I hadn’t even been able to see on the other side.

We stopped at Bridal Veil Falls and Upper Provo Falls on our drives.

Food:

Living in Houston we are quite spoiled to having many really good restaurants and are often unimpressed with food when traveling, but Park City did not disappoint. Would definitely recommend Glitretind restaurant at The Stein Eriksen Lodge was a delicious dinner on a beautiful patio with wonderful service.

Of course we ended up eating breakfast (get the pancakes!) and several dinners at the St. Regis. The bar patio/fire garden at sunset steals the show though. They also do a champagne “sabering” at 6:30 every evening with free champagne on this patio.

We obviously had a great time and can’t wait to go back. I’d love to see it with snow and I’m super interested in how it all works there considering a lot of the roads say they’re closed during winter.