Poker Run
The spring Poker Rally was held on a sunny and windy day Saturday April 12. A group of six teams showed up for some good fun and abuse, following the instructions of the rally masters Rob Green and Bill Van Moorhem. This event is a lot of fun as it provides a good opportunity to get in some spring driving, and tour some interesting parts of Salt Lake. It is also a opportunity for the Rally Masters to play a few tricks on the unwary drivers! Bill is especially good at delivering a rally instruction that has more than one meaning, and is diabolical in its syntax.

The object of this type of rally is to find all the destinations, and retrieve a envelope with a playing card in it. The instruction to the next rally destination is also on the envelope, so it is essential to find all the sites, in order. The trick is to plan a route that is both challenging enough to make find the sites interesting, yet simple enough to have most of the teams find all locations. This proved to be about what happened on this run, as some finished fast (seems that Gary regularly travels these areas, and picked up clues about as fast as we could lay them down!) and some took some time in figuring out the route. Team Hermance toured most of the lovely east side of the valley in their quest for cards. The winners, with the best Poker hand, were one of the last cars to arrive at the finishing picnic, Nick and Nicholas Nichols II. As Gary declared the game would be 5 card roll to beat (the showing hand), the tension built as the cards were turned going around the table, only to have the winning hand be a pair of 3s! A good time was had by all, and we look forward to running another poker rally next year.

Attending were: Gary Lindstrom, Jon & Susan Hermance, Pugs & Diane Pivirotto, Todd & Connie Pixton, Dana, Natalie, Rob & Nana Green, Elise Johnson, Jenny Barnes, and the winning duo honored above.
--Rob Green

Think this run is easy? Here are the clues. See if you can figure out the location. (Answers below)
1. Go west young person and head to the most famous ice cream cone in Salt Lake City. It is a double dipper but would be hard to eat since it is so big and keeps turning around.
2. If you were one of the Mormon pioneers where would you encamp on the first night in the valley? On rocks? Was it 5/17 when they arrived?
3. Before the Mormon pioneers arrived the Donner-Reed party used the same route to immigrate (emigrate?), but got so tried of cutting oak brush that they pulled their wagons up the side of the canyon. Check out this location
4. Be on the lookout for old army tanks. Now where would you find a tank but at a fort, and remember it is an old tank.
5. On the way to lunch stop by the old stone wall surrounded by research buildings. This place looks like a park.
6. Head out to Sunnyside Ave. and turn east, then turn right just past the zoo parking lot, and head up the hill. Turn left onto Kennedy Dr. and follow it about a block or two. Stop at the picnic tables in the park.

Poker Run Answers
1. Snellgrove's ice cream cone on 21st South.
2. First Encampment Park at 5th East and 17th South.
3. Donner-Reed Monument in Emigration Canyon, perhaps a mile east of the zoo and on the south side of the road.
4. Fort Douglas Museum.
5. The rock wall between the Fort Douglas cemetery and the Western Neurological Institute in the University of Utah Research Park.
6. Donner-Reed Park.

Ready to Go
Post rally picnic
Looking at the cards
Some hands on the table
The winning hand: a pair of 3's!