Utah's Valley Amazing Race - 2nd Stage

While I know it has been awhile since the last blog, I hopefully have built up the suspense to see what happened on the 2nd stage of our Amazing Race (from 5 am to 2 pm).

Due to our good time on the 1st stage, we were able to leave earlier than most groups. We received our new clues at 5 am and ran to our car to start the next days adventures. Overall, the activities were very fun; however, we learned our team wasn't very good at the water events. I would have to say this was our downfall. Anyways, here are the things we were able to do.

(1) Canoe to a Beaver Dam---We went to the CLAS Ropes Courses and had to get in a canoe and go to a beaver dam where we placed a colored clothespin on it so our teammates could find it after we got back. I'm not a big canoe expert or beaver expert; thus, this took a lot longer than expected. We probably should have done this one later in the day instead of being the first one.

(2) Frisbee Golf---We went to a park in Provo that has an 18 hole Frisbee Golf Course. Every member of our team did two of the holes

(3) Big Red Barn---We went down to Santaquin and ate some ice cream at the Big Red Barn. It was good despite being around 7 am (very healthy breakfast)

(4) Lavender Farms---This is a farm in Mona that has tons of flowers. We first had to figure out what scented bottle was lavender. Afterwards the girls did a paddle boat activity and the guys climbed a rock wall

(5) Fishing in Payson---We went to a stocked trout farm and had to bait a hook with some very active worms and then catch a fish.

(6) Garage Sale Find---On our travels to Spanish Fork, we stopped at a garage sale to pick up a toy Nascar as our mascot. The car number was 1. The place we were hoping to get.

(7) Krishna Temple---We went to this temple and had to walk two llamas on an obstacle course. Llamas are very interesting characters and we were forced to stop for one of the llamas to do "his/her" duty. The llama definitely wasn't worried about this being a race.

(8) Rafting the Provo River---We made it to the Provo River just before it closed to raft down it. Without a river guide, the idea of being in unison wasn't quite there and the river was very shallow. It was a great trip but our boat was a "special" one and our feet got soaking wet.

***Besides the water, this was a time where we somewhat fell apart. We were heading to go learn a Civil War dance; however, the location of where they do it from their website happened to be in the wrong location. They had moved from Orem to Provo just for the day. Additionally, we tried a text messaging contest; however, none of our team text message very frequently and realized it wasn't worth doing after trying for 10 minutes on the challenge.

(9) We did find the Civil War era dancing studio (just in time---we were the last ones there). It was interesting to learn such a formal style of dancing for thirty minutes. Luckily, they approved our dancing skills and didn't have to stay to learn more.

(10) Springville Art Museum---At the art museum we looked at numerous paintings for specific objects. It was kinda like the I Spy books.

(11) Provo Library---Last, we went to the library and took a short quiz online about the history of Utah Valley

We made it back with thirty minutes to spare and felt like we did well but definitely not as good as the 1st stage. We ended up getting 17th place; however, we were only 300 points behind winning it all, which would have been doing 2 or 3 more activities. This would have been definitely achievable, taking away our few setbacks.

All in all we had a great time participating in this activity. We enjoyed learning more about Utah Valley and getting involved in this fun-filled, competitive activity. Maybe our next Amazing Race will be the real thing. Will see :)