Salt Lake City

It's been almost a week since we have posted anything and so much has happened.  We are almost ready to leave Salt Lake City for Moab for another 2 days of tenting.  We successfully stayed ahead of the weather front in Montana and have not had any rain for a week now.  What a nice change!  Beautiful blue skies and today will be our first t-shirt and shorts day.  YEA!!

We spent 4 days and 3 nights in Yellowstone NP and did have heavy frost and 28 to 30 degree breakfasts while there.  But the stars were stupendous since there was no background light or clouds.  We'd get up in the morning, boil water for coffee and oatmeal, wash our faces with the hot water and be on the road about 8AM.  We were able to drive the complete north and south roadway loops and see all the major attractions and realize another week + would be nice in the future.  We walked many of the shorter trails with boardwalks and to viewing platforms, but there are MANY longer hikes to more remote spots that we didn't have time for this trip. 

The geysers, hot springs, mud pots, fumarols, travertine deposits, bison, sheep, antelope, osprey, hawks, and many other types of birds were also fun to watch.  Every evening we arrived back at the campsite close to or after sunset so we were glad for our small battery LED lights and the warm campfire as we prepared and ate our dinner.

We had 2 emergengy dowloads of Alison's camera memory card because it was full.  We'll need to get her a 4 or 8 gig card for India.

On the drive to SLC we went to Antelope Island State Park in the Great Salt Lake.  It is close to Ogden and was very interesting.  You drive on a 6 mile causeway to the island and then have a 14 mile road to drive along the one side.  There is a camp ground, picnic area and info center.  It would be fun to camp there in the future and swim in the salt lake and hike up to the ridge for the view.  There are almost no trees on the island so it is all rocks with grass. We saw hundreds of bison and many deer and antelope while on the island.

Yesterday in SLC we toured the temple grounds and I toured the LDS welfare compound, similar to New Windsor for the COB readers, while Alison went to the Art Gallery.

We went to several brew pubs while here for dinner.  Seems there have been several new 'revelations' since I was last in SLC in the 1980s. The downtown area of SLC has many showcase modern buildings and public art along many of the streets, but it is eerily quiet and lifeless nonetheless. The street blocks are square and long, and there are few people walking along, mostly tourists on their way to or from the LDS Temple Square. Even at the visitors' centers (conversion centers?) there is an aura of ostentatious luxury that struck us as more creepy than attractive or inspiring. We watched a couple of interesting historical docudramas on the enlightenment of Joseph Smith and the westward migration of the Mormons. It is quite a tale. Of course, the perspective is quite different from that in Jon Krakauer's book! [Under the Banner of Heaven]

We're off to breakfast and on to Moab. Instead of freezing, we may be boiling! Hope all is well with you.
XOXOXO

Dean & Alison