How do you top the scenery we’ve described in the Utah national parks?
By spending time with wonderful old friends, that’s how.
The evening after Memorial Day, we arrived in Heber City, about an hour outside Salt Lake City and a few miles from Park City.
One footnote on the drive up from Zion was that we enjoyed the all-time best gas/service station experience, at Beaver (Utah) Chevron. Jeff proved that friendliness and attentiveness aren’t lost arts yet! 
We spent Wednesday with Karyn Barsa, a friend of Ginny’s since middle school, culminating in a superb meal at one of the many restaurants on Park City’s Main Street.
Thursday we teed it up with Rusty Martin, my old friend from NFL days, who moved to Park City in the 90s and has had the good sense to never leave. 
The golf scene in the Park City / Heber City area is amazing – five public golf courses , all good, all (shockingly) affordable and none of them crowded.
We also joined Rusty and his lovely wife, Sally, for lunch on Friday…
and a hike in their neighborhood that gave us views of the general scenery of Park City and the Heber Valley…
…plus a view of the bobsled run from the 2002 Winter Olympics. 
And where else but in America could you see the Winter Olympics ski jumps framed by an outlet mall (which we discovered while doing some shopping after saying our goodbyes to Rusty and Sally)? 
Saturday, it was time to say goodbye to Utah and head north. It didn’t take us long to feel like we were in Cowboy Country, with lots of ranches and wide-open spaces, plus some interesting street signage. 
We did a lot of border-crossing during the drive – from Utah to Wyoming, back into Utah, back into Wyoming, briefly into Idaho, then back into Wyoming, all in the span of about 90 minutes.
Once we were in Wyoming for good, the terrain got mountainous (and snow-capped) again, as we skirted the Snake River and climbed towards Jackson Hole (the valley surrounded by the Tetons) and Jackson (the main town in the valley, where we’re staying this week).
Our first night in Wyoming was spent enjoying one of those You Can’t Make This Stuff Up coincidences. We discovered via Facebook that our friends Mike and Lisa Foster arrived here from Connecticut (after a stop in Yellowstone) the same day we did, so we ended up having dinner together at the Mangy Moose Cafe in Teton Village. 
Cheers!