A lot of National Parks are located in the area I traveled the last few weeks. Now, however, distances between destinations are getting larger, so there will be more driving and less sightseeing in the coming posts (which means that there will just be fewer posts, but covering the interesting stuff).
First of all, let me stress that the blog posts that are published are about a week to a week and a half behind on where I currently am. This makes publishing a little easier, because there sometimes is no internet connection available, as well as that it takes time to put a post together, which, sometimes, is just not there on the same day. Nowadays I take an 'off-day' once every few days. This means not driving and sightseeing all day (at the max half a day), but instead sitting behind the computer and updating finances, shopping for groceries, selecting and updating pictures, editing or uploading video, answering e-mail... etc. Quite relaxing and nice to get the updates on how the home front is doing as well!
To make this a little more understandable: the dates and locations on the picasa albums are always matched to the dates and places the pictures were taken. With regard to the blog post the location is the location that the post is about, and the date the post is published has nothing to do with when the actual events took place. I'll include the place where I published the blog post from in the title for the coming few posts to at least give you an easier indication of where I'm currently at. The route map that is sometimes included also shows the latest info as to where I am and where I've slept:
Day 26: Grand Junction, Dinosaur and the road to Salt Lake City
Day 27: Salt Lake City
Day 28: Salt Lake City and Bonneville Salt Flats
First of all, let me stress that the blog posts that are published are about a week to a week and a half behind on where I currently am. This makes publishing a little easier, because there sometimes is no internet connection available, as well as that it takes time to put a post together, which, sometimes, is just not there on the same day. Nowadays I take an 'off-day' once every few days. This means not driving and sightseeing all day (at the max half a day), but instead sitting behind the computer and updating finances, shopping for groceries, selecting and updating pictures, editing or uploading video, answering e-mail... etc. Quite relaxing and nice to get the updates on how the home front is doing as well!
To make this a little more understandable: the dates and locations on the picasa albums are always matched to the dates and places the pictures were taken. With regard to the blog post the location is the location that the post is about, and the date the post is published has nothing to do with when the actual events took place. I'll include the place where I published the blog post from in the title for the coming few posts to at least give you an easier indication of where I'm currently at. The route map that is sometimes included also shows the latest info as to where I am and where I've slept:
The story of who the Blacks are, and why I have spent 4 nights in the Boise area will have to wait for a couple of days, because this blog post will talk about Dinosaur and the area around Salt Lake City.
The last post ended with my motel stay in Grand Junction... where I cut my hair again after a couple of weeks (it needs another cut now), got a good shower, shave and my 'off-day' because the check-out time was 12:00 am. 12:00 am is noon, and 2 am is in the middle of the night, which I of course knew, but sometimes you get sleepy and call your parents thinking that it's 14:00 at their place...
Anyway: a long drive up to Dinosaur national monument: 140 miles to be exact. Nothing much exciting, farming lands with sometimes beautiful hills and mountains in the background. one cool pass to drive up through, but for the rest a lot of nothingness. A few pics of the drive are on Picasa. I arrived at Dinosaur national monument at about 14:30 (canyon entrance), but the visitor center there was closed. The park consists of an exhibit hall where a huge fossil find has been preserved the way it was found, and an inaccessible Green River Canyon. I had planned on maybe visiting the canyon a little bit (to get some nice views), but since the visitor center was closed I could get no info on how far it would be to really get into the place. The campsites were also closed, so I would have to stay outside of the park for camping... so instead of heading into the canyon I went west, where the separate entrance to the quarry exhibit is.
Another surprise here: the quarry is only accessible on a guided tour, which leaves every few hours. Based on the material I had read I had assumed you could just visit it during opening hours. Luckily I was on time to make it to the last tour of the day pfew(!). There was even some time to watch a movie on the history of the park: the canyon goes on the one-day todo list: another beautiful but inaccessible place. The geology of the place has caused a number of very old rocks to be upturned and lifted up to the surface: the reason why the dinosaurs could be found here.
The quarry itself was quite impressive, a huge jumble of bones and various dinosaur parts. Especially when you imagine that the scale of this display is only a small piece of the total find (of which a lot of bones are now on display at the Smithsonian).
All these bones are in sedimentary rock, meaning that this was probably a slower moving part of a river, where a lot (really a lot) of dead dinosaurs (and pieces of dinosaurs) flowed to and were covered in mud. An interesting thing to see, and also nice to talk to the park ranger about the history of the place and work as a park ranger. More pictures are on Picasa.
The tour ended at about 17:00, and I had planned on staying at a free campsite near a lake a little while down the road (a 2 hour drive on). Getting there at dusk I got another surprise: a 20$ camping fee instead of a free campground! 20$ for a toilet is a little too nonsensical for me, so I opted on driving on and finding a place on the side of the road. After a few turn-offs which did not deliver anything useful (ending up between trailerparks) it was getting darker an darker. But ofcourse luck helped and I found a nice spot just outside a nature reserve. I couldn't see it at night, I could only hear the geese and see that there was hardly any civilization around (lights in the distance). The next morning it became apparent that my luck had landed me in a place with a beautiful view.
No time to enjoy this anymore than breakfast and toothbrushing because I need to get to Salt Lake City! Lots and lots of driving again, but this time it looked as if I was driving into the arctic! A lake miles wide frozen over and covered in snow... mountain passes with snow on both sides going higher and higher... I was getting worried if I would have enough warm clothes with me!
After a high mountain pass I got a nice view of the valley in which Salt Lake City sits. Once I got into the city it became apparent that here it was spring, or even 'rokjesdag'. Trees were blossoming, people were smiling and wearing skirts and shorts, probably spring had just arrived. With my double layered, longsleeve clothing I soon got very warm, so time to change into spring mode as well :-). It was actually quite strange to be driving in heavy city traffic again after a lot of no-traffic backroads and no-people campsites.
First destination in Salt Lake City (SLC) was the Natural History museum. We had been talking about dinosaurs with Tyler's family, and they told me they had just been there and that I would have to go and see it when I was in SLC.
It definitely was one of the better musea. Not only for the dinosaurs (with a lot of them being found in the places where I had been to in Utah), but also for explanations on geology, which I had been wondering about driving through all of the different landscapes.
The museum itself is an architectural masterpiece. It is designed around one route through the whole museum, offering views of SLC and the valley when the exhibits in the route were also about that. A number of displays in the museum featured multi-story display cases with a lot of different objects showing the diversity of history, geology and culture in the area. Definitely a must-visit when you are in SLC.
There was a temporary exhibit on chocolate, showing where the natives traded this 'royal drink' before the Spanish started trading it with the rest of the world. Of course the whole purpose of the display was to get people to buy chocolate in the shop at the end of it (spraying chocolate sent in the display area really awakens a lot of neurons that start screaming for chocolate). I resisted.
The museum also featured minerals and crystals in the most crazy shapes and colors: amazing stuff.
After the visit to the museum it was time to get some groceries, find out if there was anything interesting going on in SLC and find a place to stay. I combined the first and last of these two by opting for an all American experience: camping on the Walmart parking lot. Walmart is a 24/7 store with guarded parking lots. They want their customers to shop at their places, so they offer people in RV's to park and camp on their parking lots (ofcourse the idea is that you get your supplies and maybe breakfast at their place). This idea didn't seem all to appealing to me, but of course you have to try everything once! The first Walmart I thought of camping at was full of hobo's and had no other campers... this didn't seem like such a good place so I checked another (there's like 5 or 6 huge stores in SLC). This one had other campers and a little more remote corner where you are not directly in the shopping traffic. The parks lighting stayed on all night, but my curtains kept it nice and dark inside the van. I woke up to the noises of some doubtful people talking (and trading?) in the middle of the parking lot at 03:00am, but I could get to sleep again quite quickly.
A different view to wake up to then I was used to...
The plan for my day in Salt Lake City was to have a look at the center of the Mormon world, another look at crazies at the Comic con which happened to be this weekend, and to end the day with a drive to the Bonneville proving grounds on the salt flats west of SLC. An impression in pictures below:
The Mormon temples looked very 'netjes' as did the people visiting them. There were a lot of people getting married and having their pictures taken on the grounds as well. The whole setting reminded me of the 'Flanders' family from Southpark. Very busy with keeping up appearances and conforming to the norms set out by the Mormon church. I read a little of the displays there, but did not have time to really get into the details. Apparently some guy in the 1800's had a 'revelation' that he was the new chosen prophet to find a promised land in the US. He even got new stone tables with holy books from the lord! He managed to convince a lot of people of his story and founded SLC as the Zion of his religion... I'll have to read up on the story, but the guy got killed by the government and has been a holy martyr for his people ever since. To me it sounds like a very good way to get a lot of power over a lot of gullible people... but apparently the organization is still very alive today with a lot of Utahns being LDS or member of the church of Latter Day Saints.
Comic con was a good balancing act for all the 'keeping up appearances' crazies of the mormon Church. It is a conference for fans of television series or films, or just nerds in general. These people are not too scared to show they're crazy, just like the rest of us, so they dress up as their favorite characters... the streets were filled with Dark Vaders, Wookies, Super hero's and zombies.
Ok, enough crazies for me, off to the Salt Flats. If you know what this place is all about: see the movie 'the world's fastest Indian'. It is about a New Zealand guy dreaming of racing his motorcycle here and setting a world record. Some overlap with my travels, so nice to be able to go to this place. Of course I had to 'don't be gentle it's a rental' on my van here... so an impression below.
It was very early in the season so the flats were still kind of wet. I asked around at a local fuel station about conditions, and someone had got stuck a couple of weeks ago. Drive on the tracks that other people have made (and look hard) and I should be alright. Let's try.... ah it's nice and slippery indeed :-D
Youtube: http://youtu.be/_ooSs4fKFpw
All guidebooks warn on getting the mud of your vehicle immediately as it is very corrosive. They mention that local fuel stations offer hoses to do this as a service. However, the station I was at did not do this and said that I should go to a car wash in the local town (which is not the way I was headed)... grrr. Well... time to camp so this'll have to wait till tomorrow.
I didn't feel like camping at Walmart again (even though I would have to get back to SLC the next day), so I opted for a local dirt road behind the salt flats. I was looking for the endless Salt Flat view. The drive didn't have too many turn outs, but at one place there was a track heading into the hills which looked accessible. I had too first clear the shoulders of the road though, so that I could get over with my small clearance vehicle :-D. Driving up the track onto the hill I kept looking for a horizontal spot to park the car... this didn't come, and didn't come, and didn't come, until the track was getting too steep for my 2 wheel rear drive vehicle... There was small knoll nearby, so if Mohamed couldn't get to the mountain, the mountain would have to come to Mohamed.... I opted for some civil engineering hand work and dug up the slope until my vehicle was at such an angle that I would be able to sleep :-D.
Dinner tasted very well after this hard work, and once again I had found a campsite with an amazing view. In the next post: a small hike in this area and the (boring and long) road to Yellowstone.
Day 27: Salt Lake City
Day 28: Salt Lake City and Bonneville Salt Flats
Mountain man 😂
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