Just another reason why I hate Utah...

Ok, just let me start with an apology here.  I will be making generalized steriotypes that some of you may or may not fit into, but be assured, this doesn't pertain to anyone personally.

So we had to go to SLC for a Dr.'s appointment for Amy (she can talk about that if she wants, I'm not going to) and do some school shopping and food shopping.  So we get into town early on Monday and get quite a bit of stuff done.  And since the hotel we stayed at had a full kitchen, we did most of our grocery shopping done Tuesday morning.  So we were sitting around the room trying to figure out something to do, so Amy thought about going down to Thanksgiving Point to go to the farm area there.  So we make the trek from our hotel in Taylorsville down to Lehi, not a short drive by any means.  Of course, the shake from Iceberg Drive Inn definetly made the drive a little easier.

So we finally made it down there.  Now let me preface this by saying for the most part, I like Utah.  Its a beautiful place.  But for some reason, I hate Utah County with a passion.  The fakeness that abounds in that place reminds me of the movie the Stepford Wives.  So anyways, we get to Thanksgiving Point and the first thing we see is a line around the building for the Imax theater.  Im not worried I say to Amy, that just means no one will be at the farm.  That wasn't the case.  I guess it was $2 Tuesday and the chance to save a whole $1.50 over the regular admission price of $3.50 was just too much a draw for the Common Utah Mormon Housewife (Commonus Domesticus Deseretus).  The CDD is between the ages of 22-35, has between 1-4 children who have never been disciplined in their entire lives, and exists solely for her trophy abilites.  They travel in large luxury SUV's from outlying master planned communities and often congragate in groups, often leaving the care of the children to one's mother, mother in law, or a ugly friend, so as not to disturb their gossiping time.  So after we find a parking place in the back of a unmaintained dirt parking lot, we get in the line that stretched almost around the building.  As we got close to the door, this should have been my first clue to get out of there.  The entrance is also the exit, and countless CDD's just plow their double strollers into my children without so much as a warning or apology.  And if you dare to make eye contact with one, you will recieve a look that says its your fault for being in my way.  As I mentioned, they often congragate to participate in gossip or other idol chatter by stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.  At this attraction, this proved to be a problem, as the sidewalks are only standard neighborhood size and are usually bordered by animal pens on one side and block walls on the other.  This proved to be a problem many times during the trip.  Time after time, a CDD with a double stroller would just park it in a way that no one could get by and take a picture of one of her children by a goat.  Finally, after seeing what must have been 100 diffrent types of goats, we get to the 2 play house play area.  There was a short block wall where me and Amy had a seat while the kids played for a while.  After we let the kids play for a little bit, we rounded up the kids and decided we had had enough and were heading to the door.  I get Cam in the stroller and start heading down the sidewalk when a couple of CDDs jump in my way and block the sidewalk.  Not wanting to be rude, I sit there for a couple of minutes thinking they will move in a second or two, or will notice me in front of them and move to the side so I can get by.  Needless to say, I must have either blended in well or was just not visible to them (just how, I would like to know), because they didn't even notice me.  I continued to listen to their conversation about buying a $200 gallon of tanning solution that turned out to be the wrong color, when Amy, who had almost made her way out, turned around and noticed I wasn't there.  She came back to pick up her fallen comrades, and the two of us lifted up the stroller with Cam in it and walked across the rocky area next to the sidewalk to open sidewalk.  None of the 20 people we passed even bothered to move over so we could put the stroller down.  We escaped with our live and our children, though we had lost our sanity somewhere in the park and wern't going back to find it.  So if you want something to do in Lehi, just go to Cabela's across the freeway.

After that experience, we realized that including travel, we had barely killed just over an hour, and needed something else to do.  Since the kids have seen pretty much every kid centric movie released this summer (I never got to go to the movies as a kid), movies were out.  Then I remembered a billboard for the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy.  I have to admit, at first I was a little worried.  It was located in what appeared to be a closed down supermarket in a residential area in Sandy.  But since tickets were more than $2, there were significantly less cars in the parking lot, so I thought let's give it a shot.  There were 2 exhibits, and we chose to do the exhibit of Utah species.  It started out kinda boring with a few tanks of trout, but as I looked at things a little deeper, there was a lot of really interesting bits of info on little plaques around the displays.  But trout and minnows will only satisfy kids so long, so we went to the saltwater part of the aquarium.  It's small, but among the best Ive seen.  Hopefully, they will get to build the full size aquarium they want to soon.  I wish we would have bought the membership rather than single day tickets.  Oh well.