East Millcreek, UT Outdoor Activities

The paranormal investigators at Grimm Ghost Tours get up close and personal with Salt Lake City’s most infamous specters during their bone-chilling ghost tours. On these tours—which helped them win the A-List Award for Best City Tour in 2012—they guide guests toward local haunts while sharing the city’s grisly past in true tales of murder, mystery, and violence. Groups may leave the city limits behind during the Outer Reaches tour, shuffling off to the unimaginably dark corners that were once Ted Bundy’s hunting grounds. Guides also tell the tainted history of other spooky local sites, sending chills down the spines of guests who explore old Fort Douglas, the Hancock mansion, and the haunted scotch bottles of the Premiere Gentile Gentlemen’s Club. All of Grimm’s paranormal jaunts combine aspects of a bus and walking tour, quickly shuttling those with a morbid curiosity from one site to the next.

For participants looking for a more intense paranormal experience, Grimm Ghost Tours offers ghost hunts at a haunted site, during which they teach guests the techniques and mortal perils of the ghost-hunting business. Once the sun sets, the brave guests join their tour guides as they use specialized equipment to scour their destination for clues and signs of life after death.

Fishwest Fly Shop prepares shoppers for successful fly-fishing forays with its impressive selection of equipment and accessories. Rods, reels, and lines by brands such as Cortland and Hardy line the shelves, along with a vast collection of colorful flies for enticing even the pickiest fish. Wading gear, outerwear, and eyewear protect anglers from the ravages of nature, and fly boxes and gear bags keep all equipment neatly partitioned. The shop also offers weekly classes in fly-casting techniques, allowing students to hone skills without the threat of popping the neighbor's homemade blimp with an errant hook.

Visitors to the Utah Arts Festival stride across concrete promenades and grassy lawns sprawled out between fountains and modern buildings, which have glass walls that reflect the fest’s vibrant paintings and eclectic sculptures. Since its inception more than 35 years ago, the four-day festival has taken over a multiblock radius to accommodate hundreds of visual artists, musicians, performers, and culinary artists, each celebrating modern art and the local community. Throughout indoor and outdoor exhibitions, visitors explore varied works of visual art represented through special exhibitions and hands-on workshops with featured artists. A marketplace also gives artists a place to sell their paintings, wearable art, and sculptures to help disseminate their crafts and raise enough money for van Gogh’s ghost to move out of their basements.

Musicians score the festival throughout its days with worldwide genres on several outdoor stages, and storytellers and other literary artists tickle ears with eclectic tales and recitations of the UN staff directory. Across the grounds, festival staffers recycle the fete’s discarded plastic, aluminum, and cardboard as well as food scraps and vegetable oil, and promote eco-friendly practices with a protected bicycle lot and bike valet.

At Bad Lands Bow Hunters' indoor range, archers take their place in one of 12 lanes and send arrows flying at moving targets up to 40 yards away. Bowmen and women nock their arrows on the bowstring and point them downrange at targets shaped like deer and turkeys hiding among the trees. At one station, archers walk up several steps onto a wooden platform that mimics outdoor shots attempted from an elevated tree stand or a public pool’s diving board.

Every year, the Utah Film Center lights up screens with a full schedule of more than 170 free programs. Independent, classic, and documentary films flicker to life at locations across Salt Lake City, each handpicked for cinematic excellence, social importance, and high frequency of dance battles. Screenings often end with illuminating discussions with filmmakers or other visiting artists.

Members can deepen their cinematic immersion with tickets to advance studio screenings, access to the lending library, and invitations to pre-showing receptions. The celluloid aficionados also host a number of festivals throughout the year, concentrating on children’s films and LGBT issues.