Floating Lanterns

This past weekend (Wednesday-Sunday) has been crazy busy with so many wonderful things happening. I won't share the coolest parts with you--sorry--but I will share a little adventure.

To give you an idea: my Saturday started off here, at the LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City.

After that, my roommate and I drove out to Tooele (Utah Motorsports Campus) to *see* the Lanterns Festival. We found out about it a month-ish ago, and tickets were $50 per person. (The ticket included one lantern kit, and materials to make s'mores.) Fifty dollars!

Bahumbug. I'm too poor right now to fork over $50 bucks for a lantern that is going to float off in the sky. I think it'd be fun to be in the mix of things with a larger group of friends, but that's not in the budget right now.

But Tooele. We just drove through Tooele not too long ago! It's pretty flat...I was sure we could find somewhere to watch the festival without having to actually pay to participate. So that was the plan.

Driving toward the festival location, we passed a lot of ranches/farms. There were cute little lambs, and llamas, and lots of cows and even some horses. We found a parking lot just down the road from the venue, and were encouraged to find a few other people there with the same idea. Cindy and Randy, with their dog Dio, told us they watched it from that parking lot a couple of years ago--it's a decent view.

Woohoo! Exito!

Because it was only about 8pm by the time we arrived, and the lanterns weren't to be released until dark, my roommate and I opted to go explore a little. Y'see, my roommate is still conducting research for her western novel, so we walked down the road a ways to see the animals.

Sunset was imminent, and that created some beautiful scenery. I was a little bummed I only had my phone to take pictures.

One thing I learned as we walked: objects are farther than they appear out there. I didn't think it would take us long to walk to the cows; they seemed closer! It took us about 10 minutes to get to their pasture. Of course, once we arrived we had to get a selfie with the cows.

...The cows are a little camera shy, and the sun is a little blinding. But they're there, I swear. 😄

It was really beautiful out there. I took a lot of pictures of the land, and I told my roommate that one of these fence pictures would be the cover photo of her novel...we'd just have to photoshop a person or two into them. No big. Haha

 Across the street from the cows was a little corral with a few horses. We decided to go over to get a better look at them. I didn't get too close because there were some giant flying bugs that looked like mosquitoes, but I've never seen them that big. ...and it stunk like manure.  I figured encounters with the flying monsters would only increase in frequency as we got closer to the animals...and the smell.

 But seriously, you can't get much more western than that picture.

With all of 30 minutes expended on our walk, we still had a long time to wait for it to get dark. I didn't know what to expect of the whole evening. The website said something shortly after it got dark they would release the lanterns.

...they really should clarify their definition of shortly.  They didn't release them until 9:45! My roommate and I were playing word games on her iPad.  We would have been listening to the Tangled music--you can't have floating lanterns without Tangled!--except there was no internet service. Claro. We were in the middle of nowhere. *sigh*

I did play the Moana soundtrack, and a little girl about three or four-years-old came over to talk to me about Moana and Tangled. (She even told me the lanterns were in Tangled, not Moana. Haha)

...and we waited.

At about 9:30, I began to see a couple of lanterns go up in the sky. At one point I counted 8 of them. It was dark, a few lanterns were in the sky, and I thought that's all it would be. Talk about disappointment! Luckily one of the people near me explained, "Oh, no. Those people launched theirs too early. If too many people do that, the fire marshall may cancel the event. Don't worry, when it starts, you will know."

So we waited some more. Gradually more lanterns began filling up the sky. It looked like the sparks from a fire floating in the sky--and just like Tangled!

All in all, the budget-friendly version of the festival was fun. It could have been better had we been better prepared to wait so long, but now I know for next time. I think it would be super awesome to be in the midst of all those lanterns as people launch them.

Well, Rapunzel waited 18 years to see them up close; I can wait, too. Haha