Sundance!!

I think I'm throwing that whole 30 day idea out the window because obviously I haven't been keeping up with it. Instead, I want to blog about the awesome Sundance Film Festival experience my friends and I had a couple of weekends ago.

Steve, my friend and my roommate's new boyfriend, had the idea to go see some films at Sundance this year since none of us had ever been. We invited our friend Taylor to come along with the 3 of us cause we new it was something he would love. We left Cedar that Friday afternoon and headed up to Lindon, where we were going to stay at Taylor's parents' house. On the way, we stopped in Scipio at a gas station for a break and found a ZEBRA there! Across the street from the gas station they have a little petting zoo with llamas, emus, bunnies, sheep, and a couple of other animals. Next to that there was a baby zebra that we could pet! He was only 6 weeks old, and was so cute and playful. We definitely weren't expecting that and it was so cool!

Jen, Steve, Taylor, and I in the car

The zebra!

Once we got up to Lindon we dropped our stuff off at Taylor's place. His parents' house is beautiful! The carpet was definitely my favorite part - it was the softest, most plush carpet I've ever felt. Anyway, after that we headed up to Park City to pick up our tickets for the films we were going to see and to get some dinner. We made it to the box office right as they were closing (at 7:00, which we thought was early) and were so afraid we wouldn't get our tickets for that night. We were able to convince them to let us in and luckily we got our tickets! After dinner and a little exploring we went to one of our films. It was a collection of short films called "New Frontier Shorts III". Some of them were ok, but overall I was a little weirded out. The most memorable was about "tornadoes", but it was really 50 minutes of a guy running through dust devils. By the end, the audience was laughing and making fun of it, it was just ridiculous.

At the Mexican restaurant we ate dinner at

The sweet moose in a gift shop

In line to get in the theater

Just waiting for our films to start :) This is probably my favorite picture from the trip haha!

Saturday morning we got up, made breakfast, and headed back up to Park City. That afternoon we had tickets for this "experience" thing. It was called "Blast Theory: A Machine to See With". We went to this building we were supposed to be at where we registered our cell phone numbers for the experience. We were told to stay in the area and we would each receive a phone call at the designated time with instructions  on what to do. While we waited we went through some smaller buildings that all had different art exhibits in them, which was pretty cool. Eventually we all got our phone calls about ten minutes apart from each other. This is how the experience went:
My phone rang and I answered it and it was recording of this creepy sounding British guy. He told me not to tell anyone what I was doing or where I was going and to walk away until I was alone. He gave me instructions to walk across the street where I was supposed to wait for him to call me again. From there he told me I was going to be part of a secret mission and I was going to be a bank robber. He gave all sorts of directions of where to walk and what to do, and led me all around that part of Park City for about 45 minutes. One of the places I had to go was into this hotel where I had to go into the bathroom and lock myself in a stall and hide all my money somewhere on my body where no one would find it. After that I was supposed to find this certain car that was parked in a parking lot and tell the man whether or not the car was empty (this is where I got slightly lost and didn't find the car until it was time to move on to the next thing). After that I was instructed to go to a bank and just before I went inside, the man yelled at me to leave immediately and run across the street to a different place because I was going to get caught. The whole time he was telling me I was being followed, and to act as normal as possible so as to not draw attention to myself. Eventually, everyone in our group ended up at a Rite-Aid store where the experience ended. The whole thing was pretty exciting and had us all on edge the entire time because we didn't know what was going to happen. It was definitely an awesome experience!

After that we left Park City and headed into Salt Lake where another film was being shown. We wanted to see a comedy while we were there and got a recommendation for one called "My Idiot Brother" from Jesse's sister Sherri. We had to waitlist for this one, so we found the theater and stood in line for a while to get our waitlist numbers. Then we went to dinner at Zupa's ( It was SO GOOD!) and got back in line to see of we could get in to see the film. We just barely made it and were so happy!! This film was hilarious and I'm so glad we got to see it. Afterwards, one of the actors from the film, T.J. Miller, was there and talked to the audience and answered questions. He has been in lots of different movies in the past and is kind of an up and coming actor in Hollywood. He was way funny and we were excited that we got to see him!

At the theater for our second film

T.J. Miller

Once that was over, we went to Spoon Me for some frozen yogurt and headed up to Midway. Steve knew about some hot pots there so we wanted to take a little swim before going back to Lindon. When we got to Midway and found the hot pots, we saw that they were closed. The guy that owns the land had it fenced off and was trying to sell it. That was pretty disappointing, but it was ok. On our way out of Midway we were driving around and somehow found the Midway ice castles. I remember seeing a news report about this a while back, but totally forgot that they were there. This guy made them out of ice and they were so cool! There was an admissions fee to get in so we didn't do that but we looked around outside for a few minutes.

The Midway Ice Castles

Later when we got back to Taylor's house we crashed in his basement and put on a movie. The next morning we got up, got ready, and headed back to Cedar. Our Sundance adventure was way fun and I'm so glad we got to go! We had a great time and now I can say I've been to the Sundance Film Festival  :)