Provo, UT

Saturday night I discovered The Salomon Center in Ogden. It’s a shopping center—parts of which are still under construction—at 2261 Kiesel Ave., and it has some really fun and unique things to do. I’m sure you’ve seen indoor rock climbing before, but what about indoor surfing and skydiving? I hadn’t either.

At this stage in the construction, the Salomon Center isn’t even visible from the street off of which you turn into it—only Iggy’s Sports Grill sits on the corner of the intersection. When the light turned green and we turned left, I was shocked by the sudden appearance of a giant, brightly-colored 13 screen megaplex. This theater has a drive-thru self-ticketing kiosk out front, and exits into the parking garage behind it. Be aware, though, that you can’t enter the theater from those doors in the parking garage—they’re exit only. You have to walk around to the front to get in.

We parked and our guide, my sister-in-law’s boyfriend, started showing us around. Most of the stuff is on the first floor: there’s Pizza Factory, Costa Vida, iRock (indoor rock climbing), Flowrider (indoor surfing), and a really big Fat Cat’s—with a big arcade, bumper cars, glow golf, bowling, and a very classy-looking pool room with at least ten tables. The second floor contains Gold’s Gym and iFly Utah, the place where you can do indoor skydiving, and the third floor has a sports medicine clinic and a dance studio. Unfortunately Flowrider was closed (and will be until November 24th), but we did go to iFly and watch from the observation deck. There’s essentially a cylindrical room with a net at floor level and really powerful winds that simulate the experience of skydiving. It was difficult to get good pictures because of the flash (and my crappy camera), but it was a lot of fun to watch people flying around directly in front of us.

In addition to the Pizza Factory and Costa Vida, there’s an Iggy’s Sports Grill and a Sonora Grill right across the street. Our little group decided to go to Iggy’s, since none of us had been there, and it was a very pleasant experience. I’d never seen a restaurant with atmosphere like that—there are giant (and I do mean giant) screens mounted to the middle of the ceiling playing whatever games are on at the time, and the booths all look like really big armchairs. The wait wasn’t nearly as long as they said it might be, and because of how busy we could tell our server was, we were pleasantly surprised by his attentiveness. The bread they bring you when you order is delicious, and so were our meals. (A word of caution if you order a steak—I always get mine well done, but this time I would’ve been better off with medium-well. Mine was a little dry, but my husband’s medium-well was perfect.) The prices are a tad higher than Chili’s, depending on what you order, but it’s not an expensive place. One more word about the atmosphere—with the games on and so many people there, it’s really noisy, so don’t expect to be able to carry on an important conversation. It’s a very fun place to eat, though, and overall our experience was fantastic.

If you haven’t checked out the Salomon Center, I suggest you do so. I would even say it’s worth the drive from Provo—just make sure you give yourselves time to really enjoy it.