Day Four

So we got up fairly early and went down to the continental breakfast. It was ok I guess, had a bowl of Frosted Flakes and a glass or orange juice, I wasn’t driving in the morning so I didn’t need the energy right away. We packed up the car (in the now cold town of Green River) and were ready to head north towards Salt Lake City. I wanted to use the bathroom before leaving, so I went in and discovered that there was a bathroom inside the fitness center, both of which had been converted from a regular old hotel room into this rather awkward looking fitness center/bathroom combo, whatever, I’m sure it serves its purpose.

The GPS said it was going to take about 4 hours and 15 minutes to get to Salt Lake City, which was only like 186 miles away (yeah I’m starting to think “only 186 miles,” back home I’d outright refuse to go somewhere if it was that far away). But fortunately it only took about 3 hours…guess the GPS underestimated the driving abilities of my sister. Along the way we saw a whole lot of nothing. Seriously. Ok, there were a few cool rock formations:  (pictures) but for the most part there was nothing. There was a filling station a few miles up from Green River I guess… We did pass through a few towns from time to time, most of which had numerous Mormon churches, big surprise there. But yeah for the most part there wasn’t much in the way of civilization until we got within about 30 miles of SLC.

When we did get there, we drove around a bit and found a visitors center across from the Utah Capitol Building. So we went in and found out what we could do there, sounded like the Mormon Temple Square was the big sight to see here. So I made the brilliant decision to walk down this hill towards the Temple Square, yes I walked down with the broken foot and all (it is getting better though). It was an interesting place. I don’t know a whole lot about Mormons except that I don’t think I’d want to be one (no offense to any Mormons who might be reading this, though somehow I doubt there are), so I guess it was interesting to learn about what they do. We took a tour led by two very nice girls from China and Malaysia who were in SLC as part of their missionary work, and while I felt maybe they were trying to Mormonize us, I did my best to be respectful without seeming like I wanted to join them. Anyway, I guess it’s kind of cool to have essentially the “Vatican” of another religion right here in the US, and I think it was definitely worth seeing. So after a few hours in Salt Lake City, we bode adieu to Utah and headed towards Nevada. 

I must say listening to U2’s albums “The Joshua Tree” and “Rattle and Hum” while driving through the desert is a pretty awesome experience. Before we actually reached Nevada, we drove along Utah’s Great Salt Lake for some time. We drove by giant mounds of salt that looked like the snowbanks we got this past winter, but since it was over 80 degrees obviously it couldn’t have been snow. We actually drove through a whole desert of salt, pretty crazy.

Anyway, we eventually reached the Nevada border to find a lot of road work…boo. Along the way we noticed a dude walking on the side of the road with a sleeping bag, not sure if he was homeless or what, but it was kind of interesting I guess…a few miles later we drove by a prison, and I had to wonder if they had anything to do with each other…hmmmmm. Eventually we reached the town of Elko, Nevada, probably the biggest place we went through since Salt Lake City, a town again full of hotels and other touristy stuff, but with the added bonus of casinos! Again it was late when we arrived, so we headed to the Super 8 in town and checked in. This particular Super 8 had a nice welcoming smell of cigarettes that reminded me of my grandmother’s old house in Somerville (it actually was kind of a cool smell, I’m not really being sarcastic there). I wasn’t quite ready for bed yet, so I discovered that there was a Walmart in town, and I felt like going for no particular reason. Didn’t bring the GPS with me cause I thought it’d be easy to find, but close to 10 minutes of driving later I realized I was going in the wrong direction, and had to turn around and search for it on the other side of town. Yeah it was dumb.

One last thing I’d like to say. There was quite a few exits in Utah and Nevada that had a little sign underneath them saying “No Services”, and had literally nothing off the exits. Just wondering, is there any purpose to these exits that lead nowhere? Any purpose at all? I couldn’t think of one. Maybe just to waste money. Oh well, I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it, I’ve lost enough sleep already on this trip.