Friday was our day to visit the area east of the Wasatch Mountains, where Bill lived 30 years ago. He described it as a jeep, a dog and living in a cabin in the mountains where he could snow ski in the morning and water ski in the afternoon. A good life for a young air freight captain. He hadn’t been back since moving to Arizona. This is a beautiful rural area, although the snow was now sparse, and I could only imagine what it would look like all snow-covered. We drove up through Park City, where they were still skiing, and up to Deer Valley. Then we drove to Snow Basin, where Bill used to ski and although they were still skiing there, we found out we could ride up the gondola and see it from the top.
Next, we headed to and Eden, and drove by the cabin where Bill lived, and on to Huntsville where we stopped at the Shooting Star Saloon, claimed to be the oldest continuously-operating bar in the United States—since 1879—including through Prohibition. Apparently, the bar was owned at that time by a couple, who took turns going to jail for serving alcohol, but they kept the bar open anyway.
On the wall of the bar hangs the stuffed head of a St. Bernard, Buck. Buck was a world-record sized dog, weighing in at nearly 300 lb. When Buck died, his owner, a friend of John, the Shooting Star’s owner, had his head mounted. The bartender told us that the man’s wife would not allow him to hang it in the house, so John let him hang in the saloon, where it still hangs today.
After leaving the saloon, we headed down Ogden Canyon to Ogden, where Bill flew in and out of Hill AFB, and then headed back to the motel. In spite of the fact that we stayed “local,” we drove nearly 200 miles that day!
