Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 2 - June 30
Salt Lake City, UT to Little America, WY
Miles traveled: 237Local Music: SuperSoFar, SLC based classicish rock. Should be named SortaOkay.
My first stop on Saturday was the lake itself. Antelope Island State Park. I’d been looking forward to swimming in the ultra-salty water for a while. The salinity varies from place to place in the lake, all the way up to 25%. That’s 8 times as salty as the ocean. The water at the swimming area was at 5 times ocean salinity today, which means that I, at 5ft 9 inches tall was unable to touch bottom in 4-and-a-half foot deep water. Because standing up straight, people will float with their head and shoulders out of the water.
As neat as this experience was, I think the best way to enjoy the lake is from a distance. For one thing, salt isn’t the only mineral in the lake, there’s also a bit of sulphur. The smell isn’t as bad as say the hot springs in Nevada, but is still off-putting. For another thing, there is an unbelievable number of brine flies. At least they don’t bite..
And finally, the salt water, the Utah heat, and the fact that I was too wound up to sleep well on Friday night really did a number on me. I wound up having to pound back about a gallon of water to fight back dehydration and then taking an unavoidable nap in my car in the beach parking lot.
Once hydrated and awake, I swung by Temple Square. The Temple is what people come so see, but I was more impressed with the tabernacle. The acoustics demo that they do in there is amazing. I also went through the museum. About half of which was interesting to me, i.e. the bit about how they constructed the temple and the tabernacle. The engineering involved was quite impressive.
My last stop in SLC was the Mayan Adventure Restaurant (below). Imagine a cross between a Chile’s and the Jungle Cruise ride at Disney and you’ll have a pretty good idea what this place is like.
I’d originally planned to make it all the way to Cheyenne tonight, but the nap kinda messed up my schedule. Rather than arrive in the middle of the night, I elected to stop at Little America, WY.
A stuffed penguin (to go along with the stuffed polar bear from yesterday) lives in the lobby of the hotel.
(That’s not why I stopped here. I stopped here because it was the last hotel before Rawlins, which would have been another 2 hrs. and I needed a good nights sleep.)
Little America was named after Admiral Byrd’s base camp on his expedition to the South Pole. The penguin was given to the hotel by a member of this expedition. Originally it was meant to be a live mascot for the hotel, but it didn’t survive the trip, so they stuffed it and put it on display.
Got in at about 12 pm, wrote up these trip reports, and am now going to bed. There’s no WiFi here, so I’ll have to wait to post them until sometime tomorrow. Sorry they were delayed.
On to Day 3
