Day eleven: Moab to West Wendover NV
First off, I want to apologize for dissing Moab yesterday.
I took a long walk through the residential area this morning and it was really pleasant. The mountains were pretty and it was quiet and peaceful. A creek flowed over rocks and it wasn’t all muddy like the Colorado river. I saw an elementary school that was so picture perfect Disney might try to copy it for a school in Celebration. Oh god…I found a lost kitten. I so wanted to take him home. He was in front of a guest house and ran up to me crying. I held him and he purred. I didn’t know he was lost until a woman staying at the guest house came up and asked me if he was mine. She said he’d been there all morning. I went around and rang doorbells in the area but either people didn’t know about him or they didn’t answer. He was well cared-for so I can only hope someone goes to look for him soon. Walking away from him was so hard!
Anyway, Moab. I can’t believe I got suckered into hanging around the tourist ghetto. I’d never go to places like that in San Francisco. I got lazy.
We found this great Volkswagen junkyard on the outskirts of Moab:
We headed north on highway 6, and the scenery started to look more like the Sierra foothills, but with different trees. I wanted to stop at a dinosaur quarry, but it closed for the season at the end of August.
Once we hit Spanish Fork, development was nonstop from there to Provo to Salt Lake City, and traffic was heavy. I’ve only been to Salt Lake City once, by plane, so I didn’t have a good idea what the area around there was like. The mountains are very dramatic and the setting is lovely.
I have a probably not uncommon instant association that Salt Lake City=Mormon. The Mormon church appears to be VERY active in Utah. In Torrey, for example, there was quite a large church, and the town population is 170. Not only that, 15 miles away was another small town and they too had a fancy church. The churches all have a distinct look. I started feeling a bit like I feel about Starbucks…a big chain with good branding that can afford to lose money in some places to maintain a presence. ??
Anyway, we came to the Great Salt Lake. I had zero expectations as to what this lake was supposed to be, other than large. We exited on a road that promised a marina, and parked next to a strange run-down event hall. The “shore” or beach or whatever it was at least a quarter mile deep. I trudged through mud, crunchy salt, dead things, and sand flies. It reminded me of the Salton Sea. As the director of a Salton Sea documentary said: “Once known as the California Riviera, the Salton Sea is now called one of America’s worst ecological disasters: a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, coughing up dead fish and birds by the thousands.”
I’m sure the Great Salt Lake is perfectly fine and healthy, but it creeped me out.
No one (that I could see) was sailing or doing any of the normal things you’d do on a lake on a Saturday. Don’t listen to me though, I spent 20 minutes here.
We drove across the Bonneville Salt Flats with a rainstorm behind us and sun in front of us and it was really beautiful. We tried to go to the state park, but got turned away near the end of the road because some event was happening. The guidebook said the salt is six feet deep in places, and it probably is, but it was mucky colored and I wanted it to be pure white!
Nonetheless, it was cool, and I feel like I got a taste of the burning man playa experience that we missed.
Now we are at a casino hotel in West Wendover, Nevada. I like staying in towns I’ve never heard of. The front desk clerk told us most of the customers are from Utah. Mmm hmm. I see how it is.
Roadtripz and Other Journeys 