By: Bears Butt

Yesterday afternoon Sherry and I decided to head on up to the Ice Castle exhibit near Heber, Utah.  The ice castles are actually West of Heber about 10 miles, nestled in the foot hills on the backside of Mount Timpanogos.  The weather had been quite mild but a storm was coming into the area but not expected until later in the evening.  Not to worry…we have all wheel drive!

So, we planned on leaving town about 3:30 and stopping in a place we had talked about but never been to…Taggarts Grill.

Taggarts is a whistle stop of a place as you proceed up Weber Canyon toward Evanston or points between home and there.  I’ve only stopped there once before in my life and that was when Bob took Rick and I fishing on the Weber River and we stopped in to see a caged Bobcat they had there.  That was a hundred years ago (or so it seems).

Well, we pulled into Taggarts and went on inside.  The pictues you are about to see of Taggarts Grill and the food have all been downloaded from the internet and I thank the photographer(s) dearly for these as I didn’t bother taking any pictures of the place myself.  I thought about it, but just didn’t do it…my bad!

Taggarts Grill looks just like this, only add about 6 inches of snow and ice all around it.  When we went in I found the atmosphere to be wonderfully rustic and rather Western.  Would you expect anything else from a place tucked away in a wide spot in Weber Canyon?

The very friendly waitress seated us at a table in a closed in patio with sky lights overhead and lots of windows around to see the snow outside.  We noticed too they have an outdoor seating area on the far end of the building for summer enjoyment!  A very nice cozy place with a fireplace that put off lots of warmth and was right alongside me!  I thought to myself as we were waiting for our meal, just how can such a small place tucked away like this afford to pay two waitress’ and 3 cooks?  After all, we were two customers among the 5 that were sitting in here.  Oh well, not my problem.

Sherry and I decided to order sea food.  She would order the shrimp plate and I the halibut.

This menu is a little old but will give you an idea of their prices.  Not too bad considering today’s restaurant prices.  Our sea food was priced a dollar more than this shows.

When the meal came, Sherry had about 10 medium whole body shrimp on here plate….Sorry Bones…no tails!  A salad and good old french fries finished off the plate.  I might mention too, the plates were rectangular and fit on the rectangular table perfectly.  Four people could eat at one of these tables and not bump into one another….something I have often wondered about at restaurants, using round plates on rectangular tables.  The table clothes were not clothes at all but butcher paper and the paper dispenser was hanging on the wall just outside the entry and next to the cash register!  You don’t see that everyday.

Back to the plates of food.  So, Sherry has shrimp and I had halibut.  Both plates looked the same with the exception of the meat.  They served us each with our desired salad dressing (Ranch in both cases) in small metal bowls.  The meats could be dipped in either cocktail sauce (Sherrys’ Shrimp), or tarter sauce (my halibut) and then there was the ever present Utah famous fry sauce in its own serving dish as well.

The salad:  This is not an ordinary salad the most restaurants serve.  I have no idea what the “lettuce looking stuff” is called, but it sort of tasted like lettuce.  It had olive slices, spinach leaves, small tomatoes, some other greenery and topped with a sprinkling of shredded cheese.  It was very fresh and refreshing at the same time!  No carrots, no purple cabbage and no normal lettuce.  I loved it!

The french fries were cut extremely thin and coated with something that make them crackle when you ate them and the flavor was WONDERFUL!  The halibut wasn’t too bad either and you had to watch out that your bite wasn’t too large because they were hotter than the dickens (heat hot)!

We didn’t have any, but they serve beer there as well, and I think wine…not sure of that however.

We enjoyed our meal and before we were ready to go, the place began to fill up with customers!  Everyone had on cold weather boots and clothing and were obviously either skiiers or snowmobile types coming in.  Large family groups and the place was about to fill up quickly.  That sure explained the number of people who worked there.  They were going to need “all hands on deck” and this was a Tuesday night!

So, off we go toward Heber and the Ice Castles!

Our appointed time to enter the Ice Castles was 6 to 6:30 according to our tickets…bought on line through Groupon for about $14…a saving of 4 or 5 dollars for the two of us.  Driving up the canyon we saw lots of deer and a few elk and even a bald eagle.  One lone fisherman on Echo and as we drove into Heber and headed West the sun had long since gone down and it was getting dark.  A light snowfall was beginning.  That would not damper our trip.

We wanted to see these Ice Castles in the dark because we had heard there were lights and music and the whole thing sounded great and we would probably miss something special by seeing them in the daylight.  Even though we had read that no matter what time you go see them they are great.  Upon arriving at the parking lot we first noticed it was PACKED!  Where in the heck are we going to park?  As I sat there in the line at the very beginning of the parking lot, I noticed a “space” right next to a car that appeared to be the first in the row…Heck, this car can fit into that space!   And in I turned…sure enough, as my headlights hit the snow bank I saw tire tracks from someone else who had been parked there!  Front Row Parking!  You can’t do any better than that!  For those of you who might be planning on adventuring up that way, be prepared for a LONG walk uphill from where you park to the event.  And don’t forget it is icey!

You can’t read these even when standing right in front of them, but these are the rules of the Ice Castle event.  Roughly it says, if an ice cycle falls on you you can not blame them because it was probably something you did to have it fall in the first place.  Any picture or movie you take while at this event and post it on your personal wall, Facebook, Twitter or anywhere else and it is located by one of the Ice Castle people, it can be downloaded and used at their discretion with no payment to you AND no photo credit given to you either.  Kids found at the event after closing will be auctioned off to the highest bidder and in the event there were no bidders, the kids will be raised to become slaves of future Ice Castle events.  It went on but Sherry wanted to go inside.

I’ll let the series of pictures show you what you can expect and I wish (always do after you are finished with something like this) I had taken a video of the inside of the castle when we first entered.  It was pretty amazing and made the whole trip worth while (even if it had been half the event it is, would have made it worth while).

Does it look cold to you?  It was FREEZING!  And like a dummy, I forgot my gloves!

This is blurry, but they had made a slippery slide out of blocks of ice and the kids (and adults) were sliding down it and having a blast.

And after we walked and walked in what seemed to be many circles around the same thing, we asked a photographer lady if she had seen us come past anytime before now….she said she didn’t, but I think I remember seeing her once before.

There is an EXIT sign!  Surely a way out!  But not before I saw some stranger stuff that most people would not have taken pictures of:

DANGER!  DANGER!  Area is still under construction!  Do NOT enter!

And of course the “Employees only break area”:  

Well, it was a very fun evening and we highly suggest that if you have some warm clothes, especially warm boots and hats and gloves and coats….go see this.  Keep in mind too, you will be walking in about 6 inches of very cold ice chips and snow.  This walk is not for little kids in tennis shoes (even though we saw some of that), nor one for anyone without warm clothing.  They do have a hot chocolate, coffee etc. stand at the end of the trail inside the event and of course they channel ALL participants through their curio shop at the end of it all….at least it was heated and very warm inside there.  BEWARE of the lady standing behind the cash register….she is looking at all parts of you to see if you have picked up anything you aren’t going to pay for!  At first I thought I looked hot to her, but then I realized what she was doing.

Fun times!

On our drive home we had a little surprise…the weather had come in quite hard and we had to follow a snow plow up and over the Park City summit and then the travel down toward Echo was about 55 mph which then got worse as we entered Weber Canyon headed for Ogden….40 mph max following 3 big rigs with flashers going.  Slushy and slick!  By the time we got out of the canyon and onto I15 headed for Willard it was just rain and the temp raised to 38!  We made it home in time for a beer and then off to bed!

Bears Butt

January 20, 2016