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A Hale of a Show

May 11, 2020 12:00 AM
The theater is small and rectangular. Three rows of stadium seats line each side with a small stage in the middle. You take your seat, the lights dim, and the show begins. Hale Center Theater Orem often gets overlooked. Each year the theater produces live musicals, comedies, and dramas. This year they have quite a few in the lineup, including big names like Matilda, Little Women, and Singin’ in the Rain. The theater also puts on youth productions; this year’s season will feature Seussical Jr, Freaky Friday the Musical, and Moana Jr.
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Ghosting Utah

May 02, 2020 12:00 AM
Utah County is definitely not the first location that comes to mind when the topic of ghost towns is mentioned. It is, however, a hidden gem of abandoned mines, ghost towns, and other forgotten locations. In addition to these ghost towns, Utah County is also home to several urban legends and supernatural happenings. Thistle, Utah (located in Spanish Fork Canyon) Thistle, dating back as early as 1878, was predominantly a farming community. In 1890, Thistle became accessible by railroad, which brought business to the small town. Disaster struck in 1983; a landslide blocked the river. The river blockage caused flooding and more landslides to bombard the town of Thistle. A mandatory evacuation notice forced residents to abandon their homes and farms. Residents only had a few hours to prepare before evacuating, so many families were forced to leave their belongings. Houses ended up completely submerged, and the railroad and highways running through Thistle were buried under fifty feet of mud. Even after the disaster subsided, Thistle remained abandoned. Today, remnants of old houses, buildings, and farms can be seen where Thistle once thrived. Weeping Widow (Located in Spanish Fork Cemetery) The Weeping Widow is an elegant gravestone carved into the shape of a woman. Located in the Spanish Fork Cemetery, the statue depicts a young woman, crouched down, with her hand near her face. Legend has it that this woman is mourning for her lost baby. During the night, the statue is said to actually cry tears. Some even claim to be able to see the tear stains during the day. Knightsville, Utah (located near East Tintic Mountains) Knightsville was a small mining town, with over 1000 residents in 1907. However, the mining wasn’t a sustainable venture. People began moving out in 1907, and the entire town was deserted by 1940. Today, old foundations make up the majority of the ruins, but Knightsville’s cemetery is still in surprisingly good condition. Rock Canyon (located near Provo, Utah)It is not uncommon for hikers to report hearing heart-chilling screams echoing throughout the canyon. Rock Canyon has an unfortunate history of hikers falling to their death. Several people have reported incidents of seeing a man fall from the cliffs but disappear before hitting the ground. Even more chilling, Andy Weeks wrote in his book, Haunted Utah, that “evidence of satanic rituals and the bodies of murder victims” have also been found in the canyon. Tibble Fork Parking Lot (Located in American Fork Canyon) Rumor has it that if a driver does three loops at the top of Tibble Fork parking lot, a ghost will be summoned. After making all three loops, the sound of another engine can be heard; doing the loops summons a ghostly hearse. Any attempt to leave the parking lot results in a high-speed chase. The ghostly hearse will apparently chase the tail lights, forcing you down the mountain and out of the canyon.
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No Car? No Problem

May 02, 2020 12:00 AM
Utah County, nestled on Utah’s Silicon Slopes, has seen rapid growth in recent years, and its offerings and opportunities are bringing ever greater numbers of people to the valley. Every driver on the road will tell you such growth has brought with it certain downsides. Increasing difficulties with traffic, parking, and air quality have raised concerns, but cities like Provo have been hard at work combating the problems and offer ever more appealing solutions. Utah County is making an increasingly convincing case for ditching your car in favor of environmentally friendly methods of transportation that also beat the traffic.
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On the Road Again

March 07, 0020 12:00 AM
Renovated Airstreams, trailers, and camper vans have mixed nostalgic wanderlust with modern conveniences, making many Millennials dream of selling their belongings and hitting the open road. The freedom of going wherever, whenever, is enticing—especially when these adventures are documented with hashtags and validated with likes, comments, and virality.However, Millennial minimalists are not the first ones to hit the road—not even close. First there were the pioneers on covered wagons, then the railroaders, and still today there is a large community of people who spend their lives driving, almost 24/7, without any pomp and circumstance.Enter truckers—the opposite of hipster #vanlife, and the unsung heroes that keep our grocery stores stocked and our businesses running.One of these hidden heroes is Val Stokes, founder and owner of Stokes Trucking. As a 17-year-old in the early 1970s, he worked at a local truck stop, the Crossroads, in his hometown of Tremonton, Utah, and felt the wanderlust bug bite him.Val loved watching people come and go. “I’d see the truckers pull into the Crossroads, get their fuel, go into the café and have dinner, then get in their truck and head off. I thought, ‘Geez, I wonder where he’ll be tomorrow.’ All my life, I’ve loved seeing what’s over the next hill. So I just thought it would be fun to drive for a living.”In 1978, he began driving trucks for others. But the following year, he persuaded his father-in-law to cosign on a loan that would finance his first truck. Leaving behind his wife and one-year-old son, Val began to drive five or six days a week, 600 or 700 miles a day, at the then-national interstate speed limit of 55 miles per hour.With a trailer full of canned soup, or dairy products, or bananas, or pharmaceutical supplies, or baking flour, or even bowling balls, Val would head to a new destination each week: maybe Las Vegas, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Wisconsin, South Dakota—anywhere. All without any form of GPS.“I had an atlas,” says Val. “A good old Rand McNally. I had a briefcase full of city maps, like Chicago, LA, San Francisco. You could buy those at truck stops readily. Anytime I’d go to a city I’d never been before, I’d stop on the outskirts of town and buy myself a map.”And if he needed to call a customer to verify directions, he’d have to stop at a truck stop and use the payphone.Still to this day, Val knows not only how to navigate across the country on the interstate, but how far all the cities are from one another. Photo by Paul Waldron“From right here in Tremonton, it’s 110 miles to Evanston, Wyoming,” he recalls from his inner map. “403 miles across Wyoming, 456 across Nebraska, and 310 across Iowa—and you’re in Illinois.”On his cross-country treks, he would tune into a good AM or FM station or listen to one of his cassette tapes. He would also check out books on tape at one truck stop that could be returned at another, like an interlibrary loan.Truck stops were and are central to life on the road. At truck stops, truckers refuel both their bellies and their trucks, take showers, and park for the night so they can snooze in their sleepers. Nowadays, like everything else, many mom-and-pop truck stops have been taken over by large chains.When Val would get hungry—the ice in his cooler from home melted and the homemade sandwiches long gone—he’d stop at a truck-stop café, where he consumed “good, home-cooked meals.” (Unlike today, his early trucks lacked amenities such as a microwave and refrigerator.)“You could get anything,” Val says. “Omelets, chicken-fried steaks, mashed potatoes. Any kind of breakfast, lunch. A lot of times they’d have a lunch special. Most truck-stop cafés would have a special at night. But you could get anything from spaghetti or chicken parmesan to a patty melt or a steak.”After eating, he’d head back out to deliver his load until he needed to stop again. Truckers are only allowed to drive for eleven hours at a time, meaning that if a trucker hits his or her limit fifteen minutes outside of a big town, they have to stop on the road and wait until they can drive again. In the early days, trucker logs were on paper, and a creative mind could get around the eleven-hour limit easily. Today’s trucks, with their electronic logs, are not so forgiving.Despite the daily grind, Val enjoyed seeing the sights as he drove. One of his favorite routes traversed through the Upper Midwest.“I liked the Upper Midwest in about May, when the corn’s about that tall”—Val’s hand demonstrates about three or four feet off the ground—“and everything’s green. You can look at the corn rows over the rolling hills and it wasn’t too hot and humid yet. It was beautiful.”He also loved driving to California, where you could see relics from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Now, the desert drive is bumper-to-bumper from Vegas to LA. He misses the days when you could pull a big truck onto the Vegas Strip, right up to a hotel casino, and indulge in the $1.99 buffet.The increase of traffic is one of the biggest changes Val has seen through the years. That and gas prices—when he bought his first truck in 1979, diesel fuel was just 35 cents per gallon.40-plus years, a brand-new office building, and forty trucks in the fleet later, Val only takes a load when one of his drivers is sick. But he’s still proud of being a trucker.“It’s a great profession,” he says. “It’s one that’s severely underappreciated, and that’s kind of a sign that we do our jobs so well. If we weren’t doing our jobs so well, we’d get a lot more attention.”—Ashley Evans
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St. George's Hidden Gem: Tuacahn Center for the Arts

March 03, 0019 12:00 AM
Photo by Alan LevineSt. George Utah is known for its red rocks, hikes, and amazing weather. It’s the perfect place to go if you want to escape the winter months. However, the biggest gem there is the Tuacahn Center for the Arts.
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Life Above the Death Zone: Survival Over 26,000 FT.

January 02, 0019 12:00 AM
Inspiration
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Hoodoo You Do?

January 06, 0018 12:00 AM
In the area of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah, there is a cluster of national parks. Among these lies Bryce Canyon National Park, which is actually many natural amphitheaters rather than a canyon; it is known for its beautiful scenery, red sandstone, and hoodoos—rock columns created by erosion. A geological wonder, more than 1.5 million people visit Bryce Canyon each year to hike, camp, and just look at the views. So how do you navigate this natural masterpiece amidst so many other visitors?
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Shakespeare in the Rockies

November 11, 0017 12:00 AM
Sam Ashdown (top) as King Henry V and Larry Bull as Chorus in the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2016 production of Henry V. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2016.)Despite its growth in the past decades, Cedar City, Utah, has an infectious small-town charm that soothes the busy lifestyle. The small, picturesque Main Street evokes feelings of hospitality and comfortable living. Although a tour of the town only takes 20 minutes, driving past the diners and cafés is enough to convince you that you’re in sore need of a break from the office.
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Leaving to Live

October 01, 0016 12:00 AM
A Kurdish refugee boy from Kobani, Syria clings to a fence that surrounds a refugee camp in the border town of Suruc.
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Amethyst Lake: A Gem in the Uintas

June 30, 0016 12:00 AM
The High Uinta Wilderness Area is an expansive piece of nature crisscrossed with adventurous hiking trails and filled with glittering lakes populated by beautiful trout. The most scenic part of it has to be the trail to Amethyst Lake. Given that the distance to the trailhead (at Christmas Meadows) is within two hours from Provo, Utah, you might expect to see more crowds. However, it’s likely that this short but steep hike keeps away many of the tenderfeet, saving this gem for the more intrepid hikers.
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Rite of Spring: Flower Festivals Around the World

June 30, 0016 12:00 AM
“April showers bring May flowers”—and with them, flower festivals. These events are found in many different countries and cultures, so no matter where you are in the world, you’re certain to find a flower festival nearby and people with whom to celebrate the advent of spring.
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Autumn Storytelling Across America

May 05, 0015 12:00 AM
Storytelling is no longer limited to campfire circles or children’s reading time at the library. The oral tradition of storytelling lives on in festivals across America. Whether you’re looking for a humorous tall tale, a mystical folk story, or a musical travelogue, storytelling festivals will fill your niche and leave you yearning for more. You can even follow your favorite storytellers across the country. Professional storytellers—including Donald Davis, Clare Murphy, Bil Lepp, Carmen Deedy, Andy Offutt Irwin, and Kevin Kling—attend these storytelling events and often make repeat appearances at various festivals.
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Park City: The Perfect Winter Recharge

January 14, 0015 12:00 AM
It’s been a long day shredding powder on Park City’s world-famous ski slopes, and you’re exhausted from just one too many runs. You take off your skis and waddle gracefully back into your hotel, trying not to wince from sore hamstrings and triceps. You’re too exhausted to think of anything but relaxing—and you’re in luck. In addition to its renowned indie film screenings and star-studded parties, Park City is the perfect place for a winter recharge full of high-end spa treatments, massages, yoga, and healthy eating. Next time you need a vacation from your vacation, consider any of the following options to help you return home feeling rejuvenated.
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Redefining the Festival of Colors

January 14, 0014 12:00 AM
Participants throw colored powder into the air during one of the throwings at the Festival of Colors in Spanish Fork, Utah.
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Get Your Feet Wet: Tips for the Beginning Water Skier

June 29, 0013 12:00 AM
Become a Waterski Pro
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Deseret News reports on Stowaway

May 17, 0012 12:00 AM
Read what one of Salt Lake City's major newspapers, The Deseret News, has to say about Stowaway's take on travel.
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I'm Free, Free Flying

April 15, 0012 12:00 AM
Travel writer Ben Schlappig, better known as Lucky, traveled up to 300,000 miles a year and visited more than 30 countries—while still in college. Lawyer Kim Bouck recently flew her family of four to Disneyland for free. From young adults like Lucky to seasoned pros like Bouck, travelers around the globe are cashing in on free and cheap flights. The blogging and Internet world is rich with tips and tricks to get the best boarding bang for your buck.
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Sundance Film Festival

December 28, 0011 12:00 AM
in·dy 'in-dē n, adj : Short for independent and used in phrases such as “indy films.” Doesn’t always mean low-budget. As a movement, “indy” connotes trendy-while-pretending-not-to-be-trendy. One who is “indy” may sport uniquely shaped hats, retro glasses, and eco-friendly duds.
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