A diagram of the cave system at Tampanogos Caves.

At precisely 7:00 am, I logged onto recreation.gov and snagged two tickets to tour the Tampanogos Cave. Our time slot was 9:45 am. That gave us a little time to watch the paragliders and the hang gliders play around. They came out in droves around 5 am. Watching them dance in the stiff breeze rising up from the lip of the mountain ridge, reminded me of when we flew ultralights at the Wild Rose grass airstrip in rural Wisconsin. That was the beginning of a flying fetish that lasted from about 1987 to when we sold our Piper Cherokee airplane 3 years ago.

The Cave tour went like this: we checked in at the bottom of a mountain at 9:45am; we trudged 1.5 miles up a 1000 foot vertical rise with astounding panoramas; at the cave entrance we met up with a small group and then a Ranger took us through the cave with some nice formations and tight squeezes. The cave was 45º. We were glad that we packed jackets in our backpacks.

On the way up, we came across a group of people that hike up the mountain just for the pour joy of exercise. Roger, an 83 year old dude was one of them. He makes the trek almost daily and he makes it look easy. He has a custom-made wooden walking stick that depicts the trail’s highlights, like the Kodachrome rock; the W-switchbacks; and the dead-dog drop where are a dog fell off the cliff chasing a squirrel. Roger had a story for each notch on his stick. It took us 1 hour and 10 minutes to make the 1.5 mile ascent. Roger beat us to the top, but hey, I stopped to take photos.

This, being the third cave that we have toured on this trip, has graduated us into the class of genuine spelunkers. We love caves, so we did not let the grandeur of Carlsbad Caverns spoil us for other cave experiences. It would be easy to do, but we resisted it. Caves, of all sorts, are just too-cool-for-school.

It was 1 pm before we returned to the road. We headed for Park City, the home of the famous Sundance Film Festival. Nestled among tall green mountains, Park City was the most beautiful town we have run across yet on this trip.

It has a classy art scene that rivals Santa Fe. The galleries displayed top-notch art work. Even the antique shops stocked a line of goods that were in a class of their own.

There was a craft brewery and distillery on every corner. I have noticed that it isn’t just breweries anymore. All the chic craft breweries have added distilleries to their line of beverages.

The town just smelled of high-end money. That was confirmed when I looked at the prices of real-estate. A tiny studio condo went for $375,000. Houses ranged in the $1,250,000 to $15,000,000 range. But, all that money bought an absolute picturesque town. I wonder if the town was always an exclusive area and that is why Robert Redford chose it for his Film Festival, or was it Redford’s Film Festival that made it so gentrified. Hmm, the old chicken and egg delema.

The best part of the day was meeting up with my grand-nephew, Chandler, and his lovely girl friend, Cora, at Los Crucos Mexican Restaurant. It turns out that Cora, a nurse, works in Park City. She further confirmed the exclusivity of the town.

After supper, we returned to the Flight Park. The winds were too strong for Chandler to fly his paraglider, however he took out a para-kite and flew that. The winds were so strong that the kite nearly took him into the sky like Dorthy in the tornado.

Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum.

Dave and Wanda

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