Park City 2025 -

Happy Friday!

Today I’m sharing about our little getwaway ski trip that Ryan and I took at the end of last month.

This trip wasn’t on the books originally. It all started with…

…our first family ski trip to Roundtop.

On that trip our kids got the hang of snowboarding pretty quickly and we had to peel them off the mountain at the end of the day. Seeing how much they loved it, I started to dream about taking them out west on a true ski trip experience (east coast resorts near us are less than desirable).

Within weeks, Ryan had booked a trip for us to visit Park City without the kids. We told them we needed to “scout it out” before dropping the money for a family trip. 🤣

Over the last five years, Ryan and I have taken ski trips out west with friends to…

…Vail in 2021. Most of the resort was still closed due to covid restrictions, but we enjoyed our trip nonetheless! My friend’s husband and I took two days of ski lessons together, and it drastically improved my ski experience. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it any other way! Vail had a lot of blue and green runs that intersected, making it more accommodating to different skill levels to ski together.

Then there was Beaver Creek in 2022. We had the pure privilege of staying in the most amazing accomodations (our friend Billy’s hookup), and I don’t think we will ever have that posh of an experience. It was such a gift!

This past Christmas, I recently took a girls trip to Breckenridge. I loved this experience because I realized I finally felt confident on the mountain, and our accommodations were so convenient and at a great price point!

They were all great experiences for different reasons, but Park City, Utah appealed to us because it is only a 30-minute drive from the airport (rather than the 2 hours that it takes to get to Colorado resorts).

Before the kids got up for school on Thursday, Ryan and I were out the door on our way to the airport. We flew on a direct flight from Baltimore to Salt Lake City, rented a car via Turo, and our first stop in Park City was…

…Walmart to pickup some groceries.

I will say, the short drive into town was nothing short of amazing. Every trip to Colorado, with the 2-hour winding incline drive to the resorts, I have struggled with serious altitude/car sickness. I don’t normally get car sick at home, but every time I’m wiped out for the first day in Colorado.

Park City though? Nope. Not a single inkling of nausea.

Before heading to our airbnb, we were hungry and wanted to check out downtown Park City, so we grabbed a bite to eat.

We parked in a nearby parking garage and waited less than 15 minutes for a table at Harvest. Um, everything was amazing.

Hands down, amazing.

I ordered the Fresh Herb Omelette and Ryan got the Avocado Toast with bacon, plus free coffee refills to boot.

Main Street was closed off to cars and the downtown area was buzzing with people walking around with totes. We quickly realized the annual Sundance Film Festival was kicking off on that same day.

This didn’t really effect us too much, as we were staying at the neighboring Canyons Village resort (about a 10 minute drive). Our decision to do so was based on a cheaper price point and Canyons was less crowded.

We spent the rest of our afternoon checking into our airbnb condo, getting fitted with our gear delivery, and then we took a walk up to the village to get a lay of the land.

We walked back to our condo, took a nap, then ventured out again to eat dinner in the Canyons Village at Dos Olas. We called it a night and wanted to get good sleep before our first day of skiing.

Just like at home, Ryan made breakfast for us on Friday morning. Our plan was to make breakfast at the condo on ski days, to save money and time.

Because the main lifts didn’t open until 9am, we had slow-ish mornings on Friday and Saturday. We also had much needed UNINTERRUPTED conversations by the fire each morning. Always a highlight.

Overnight we heard someone knocking on our ground level door. It scared me half to death and I made Ryan go check it out. He ended up not opening the door as the uninvited guest had left. In the morning when we headed out, we saw this pizza on our doorstep. Ha! Apparently someone never ended up getting their midnight pizza order.

It was a short walk from our condo to the Cabriolet gondola, a much quicker way (than walking) to get up to Canyons Village.

This was the view of the Cabriolet gondola from our condo. It is an open-air gondola with little wait time, that quickly gets you up and down from the village. It was such a breeze!

Our first day we chose to ski our way to the Park City Mountain Resort. After multiple lifts, it took roughly 30 minutes one-way. Not ideal, but we knew we wanted to explore both resorts. Plus, Park City resort had all the green runs, which was my preference.

After a full morning of skiing, I was having issues with my boots. At my fitting, I was encouraged to go up a size, and that proved to be problematic. So at noon, we stopped by the Park City epic gear store and exchanged my boots for a smaller size. What a dramatic difference.

Hot tip: if you’re in between sizes, go down.

My legs had never been sorer, having to compensate for the extra room in my boot. No bueno.

While we were down at the village, we stopped for lunch.

The remainder of the day Ryan convinced me to ski blue runs. It’s usually easier for him to snowboard down blues, so I agreed, but my legs were beat from a whole morning of skiing in boots that were too big. We went on a few runs, nearing the end though, I was praying that my legs wouldn’t give out altogether. 🤞

We made our way to the multiple lift routes to get back to Canyons Village.

We rode the long gondola with this guy who played his “ski”-tar the whole way, gloves on and all. When we got off of the lift to ski to the next, he skiied and played away ahead of us. So hilarious!

That night we were wiped and decided to eat a simple salad for dinner at home and called it a night.

Saturday morning, we were up and at ’em! Same routine as the day before.

We put our gear on and headed out the door to walk to the gondola.

This is the view up the road from the Cabriolet gondola, where our condo was located. All the way at the top of this road is the village.

Day 3 of our trip (our second day on the slopes), was in the single digits, low visibility, and lots of wind.

This day we stayed on the Canyons side. After a full morning of skiing and snowboarding, we were both freezing and my legs were still sore from the morning before. So we called it a day and grabbed a cappuccino at Murdock’s Cafe.

We returned our gear and then took the gondola back down to our condo and spent the rest of the day reading, taking a nap, and just relaxing.

We had 5pm dinner reservations at The Farm Restaurant in Canyons Village. So up the gondola we went for our final time!

Everything we ate and drank was delicious! Highly recommend this restaurant! The smoked trout dip appetizer was our favorite, hands down.

We ended our evening with a brisk walk home and enjoyed the lights that were still up from the Christmas season. It snowed the whole way home, so serene.

On Sunday, our last day, we woke up to another single digit day. Although the sun was out, so it didn’t feel so brutal.

Since we didn’t fly out until Sunday evening, we had planned to spend the day in historic Park City. We tidied up our condo, checked out, and drove over to Park City. We found free parking a few streets down from the downtown area.

Our first stop was another breakfast fave at The Bridge Cafe and Grill. It was about a 15 minute wait, but so worth the wait!

I orderd the Burrinho (breakfast burrito) and Ryan had the Eggs Benedict. The homefries were perfectly cooked. I’m still dreaming of that meal.

This cafe was at the bottom of the town lift on Main Street, so it was a ski in/ski out restaurant. The end of the run was a bridge that you had to ski across to get to the cafe. Such a cool idea!

We headed over to Main Street to do some window shopping. We saw these leather Hestra gloves everywhere on the mountain. Ryan was immediately intrigued, especially because his current gloves didn’t do a great job of keeping out the elements.

Just as I was telling Ryan I was on the lookout for a good cookie, we stumbled across this cute gem!

This chocolate chip cookie was warm and gooey and hit the spot!

There were a few street performers out, this one had an owl and a crow named “Sheryl the Crow”. I’ve never seen a crow that wasn’t all black.

But this.

This.

This right here, won the animal award. I mean, for a second I tried to figure out if this woman was holding a stuffed animal because her dog never moved.

How in the world did her dog not care about having all that fuss on him?

I laughed for a good ten minutes at the cuteness and immediately texted this photo to my girls. Ryan had a much different opinion about what we witnessed. 🤣

Around 2pm, we got into our car and headed to the Salt Lake City airport. We had a few hours to kill before boarding our flight, so we watched the playoff game and got a bite to eat in the Delta lounge. We boarded our flight and were back home a little before 1am.

We enjoyed our time away, but I realized it is much more fun going on a ski trip with friends and definitely would be more fun WITH OUR KIDS! Especially because Ryan is so much better at snowboarding. Much of our time on the mountain was him speeding down and then having to wait for me, which is more fun to do with more than just two people.

All in all though, it was a glorious time away just the two of us. The thing I love about ski trips is that it’s the perfect combo of adventure and cozy. I’m more partial to cozy, while Ryan to adventure. So it ticks the box for both of us!

I’m headed into this Super Bowl weekend without much on the schedule today. So glorious.

If you’re needing Super Bowl ideas, you can try my…