The 2nd day we were in Park City, we woke up and drove up to the Olympic Park. I really wanted to do a zip line. When we first arrived we could hear music and a crowd gathering, we went to check out what was going on. Their were a bunch of kids, all ages practicing their jumps into water. They were fully clothed with a wetsuit, life jacket and ski's. It was AMAZING to watch. There were little guys that were 5 and 6 learning to jump along with trained Olympic jumpers practicing for the next Olympics. After waiting for awhile, we went and purchased our zip line tickets. We started to head down the hill to the chair lift. While walking down you could here this sound that truly sounded like a small jet taking off, and we rounded a corner and realized we were at the bottom of the Nordic Ski jump. It was absolutely breathe taking to see. All the Olympic Athletes were practicing that day. We watched in AWE for hours. The talent that these young athlete have is AMAZING!!! After watching for awhile we decided to take the chair lift up to go zip lining. Once we reached the top we realized that we could go to the top of the Nordic ski jump and watch the athletes up close and personal. We found a bench that was right above jumpers. It was really fun watching all of the athletes little routine as they got ready for their turn down the slope.
The men were very serious, did the same ritual every time, never spoke, just focused. The funniest thing we saw was there was 2 women that were also jumping. You could hear them talking the second they got off the lift, as they walked closer you could hear the conversation about a guy from the night before....the girls would walk down doing the SAME routine as the men but NEVER stopped talking. The one girl keep talking till she pushed off to go down a REALLY steep hill. Boomer and I have laughed about the difference between the way the men and the women were, it was awesome. We sat there for another hour absolutely in awe of these athletes. Soon after we went and did the zip line, we had to wait for about 30 min for some rain and storm clouds to blow over, but FINALLY we got to zip down the mountain. It was really fun.
This is a close up of the ski jump. The artificial turf on the jump reminded me of a hula skirt. Here is some close pictures of it. The track that ski's go on have small balls that help the ski's move, that is what made the sound of the small jet.
I loved these shots, the one on the left is what it looks like right now, notice the flag poles. The one on the right is what it looked like during the Olympics. Where the flags were they had 10 story high bleachers. So AMAZING!!
Some of the men training for the 2014 Olympics in Russia.
These next pictures are a step by step of the athletes getting ready to jump. They would first slide on these metal seating poles...
Can you see the turquoise spot on the grass
The 2nd jumper sliding on the pole....
This was a fun show all the jumpers put on with music. The detail I loved, is there was a man in charge of the BUBBLES in the water. As soon as the jumper would take off, he would start the bubbles. The bubbles made it so the jumpers wouldn't hit hard in the water and then it make them surface quickly. So, belling flopping didn't hurt!!
It was really fun to watch.
The bottom right corner picture is the bob sled run.
We had such a fun, amazing (I say that word A LOT) morning. Now we were off to an afternoon of golf. The golf course was BEAUTIFUL and the weather was PERFECT!! I got side tracked at the beautiful scenery, homes and barn. Here are some pictures of the fun afternoon.
That evening we decided to head to Salt Lake City for dinner at Market Street Grill, SO, YUMMY!!!! We got all dressed up hoping to go dancing, we found out that is REALLY HARD to do on a Tuesday.
It was a very fun, relaxing night.
Day 3 to come.....
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