{"id":654,"date":"2010-06-24T12:21:05","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T20:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=654"},"modified":"2010-06-24T12:21:05","modified_gmt":"2010-06-24T20:21:05","slug":"summer-camp-for-grownups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=654","title":{"rendered":"Summer Camp For Grownups"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last week, Mom and I set off for southern Utah.\u00a0 That’s right, we went to the desert in the summer<\/em>.\u00a0 We were bound for Red Mountain Spa<\/a>, a “fitness spa”, where we could basically play all day, meet nice and interesting people, and eat delicious food.\u00a0 It was sweet.\u00a0 And really hot.\u00a0 But pretty much just sweet.\u00a0 I arrived on Wednesday on a harrowing flight from Salt Lake where things were flying around INSIDE the plane, and I was failing miserably to stave off a panic attack.\u00a0 “Don’t worry, it’s like this all the time”, assures the stewardess, which really makes me question her sanity.\u00a0 But anyway, after finally arriving alive in St. George, I was greeted by a very nice man, and toted back to the spa with another guest, T, who would become one of our buddies for the week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Red Mountain is incredible.\u00a0 It’s rust colored buildings blend in nicely with the red, browns, oranges and yellows of the surrounding desert landscape.\u00a0 The resort its self backs up to Snow Canyon State Park, nestled within\u00a0 soaring red rock outcroppings.\u00a0 Gorgeous.\u00a0 Around the resort, there are many species of native desert plants, (and some not so native, but pretty, so it’s ok), including the barrel cactus, which I had never seen before, but was very cool. \u00a0And spiky.\u00a0 I had borrowed the 100mm Canon lens from friends back home and had a blast taking macro shots of all the interesting plants on the property.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Every day is busy and full at the spa, but only as busy and full as you want it to be.\u00a0 We began every morning with the guided hiking tours led by Jack and Jill, (yes, I’m serious).\u00a0 Now, if you read this blog, you know that I hike a fair bit, and while I’m not in the shape I’d like to be right now, I still feel like I know what I’m doing in a pair of boots.\u00a0 These hikes, especially the one where we went straight up the rock face<\/em>, had me huffing.\u00a0 I could give the litany of excuses: it was hot, there were no switchbacks, there was no shade, IT WAS HOT!\u00a0 Honestly, though all of these things are true, and do have a real impact on performance, I think I just need to work out more.\u00a0 So.\u00a0 More cardio on the horizon.\u00a0 Truly though, I loved the morning hikes.\u00a0 They were my favorite part of the trip, especially since I got to hike with Mom!<\/p>\n

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We would arrive back from the hikes around 10, since the sun gets so intense after that.\u00a0 There were any number of activities we could chose to do then, yoga, stretch, water aerobics, etc.\u00a0 Each day, however, we went to cooking class!\u00a0 Sous Chef Mike taught these one hour classes, and they were different every day.\u00a0 We learned about different types of grains, green smoothies, drank Mormon Tea, and generally sat in awe of his awesome knife skills.\u00a0 Seriously, I’m jealous.\u00a0 I want to wield a knife like that.\u00a0 Our places had little name tags for us every day too, making us feel very important.\u00a0 Later in the week, I “worked” with Sous Chef Mike in the real<\/em> kitchen when I was “Chef For the Day”.\u00a0 Very cool. I sliced, (not as well as Sous Chef Mike), and diced and worked the GIANT immersion blender to puree soups.\u00a0 It was rad.\u00a0 I got to keep my chef’s coat.\u00a0 It makes me feel special.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Cooking class was followed by lunch, which was served buffet style.\u00a0 We learned to eat cold soup, and Mom learned about hummus and flat bread.\u00a0 What a wonderful thing.\u00a0 We were also often joined by some of the friends we made, L, T, or B.\u00a0 They couldn’t be more different from each other, but all are fabulous women, whom I hope to keep in touch with out here in the “real world”.\u00a0 After lunch, we would either go to another fittness class, or take some lounge time by the pool, or ride our bikes up some killer hill in the gazillion degree heat to the local hippie-artist-coffee shop community, or get complementary makeovers.\u00a0 We did all of those things.\u00a0 The fittness and biking were hard, the lounging and makeovering were not.\u00a0 Both were wonderful and left smiles on our, sometimes sweat\u00a0streaked,\u00a0faces.<\/p>\n

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In the evenings, it would cool off, and we would walk, or bike, to dinner, again often joined by friends.\u00a0 We often sat at the “Community Table”, where anyone can join, or we created our own.\u00a0 Mom and I are social creatures, and will talk to anyone.\u00a0 This is how we make friends.\u00a0\u00a0 Dinner was usually a drawn out affair, with everyone sharing what they did that day, and planning for trips, classes and excursions for the next day.\u00a0 Sometimes dinner was followed by something fun like Outdoor Yoga, a photography class, or\u00a0Texas Hold ’em.\u00a0 Mom won of course, though she didn’t even know she was holding a straight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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We had a wonderful time at Red Mountain.\u00a0 It was great getting to reconnect with Mom, and meet lots of new and interesting people. I’d love to go back with Mom, or girlfriends.\u00a0 It’s a beautiful place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Mom and I set off for southern Utah.\u00a0 That’s right, we went to the desert in the summer.\u00a0 We were bound for Red…<\/p>\n

Continue readingSummer Camp For Grownups<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11,7,6,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-food","category-friends","category-hiking","category-travel","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":698,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}