Today was a day of leisure if you will, when we left Sparks ( little town outside of Reno) the only plans we had were to make it to the Great Salt Lake and Salt Lake City anything beyond was just good luck b/c Salt Lake City was 450 miles away. Nevada loves their gambling...please let me explain, we stopped to get gas in a little town that had three or four casinos and the gas station had a bigger gambling section than it had for the gas station! Speaking of gas, I can't help but notice something is up with Chevron. EVERY where we have gone, Chevron gas is at least 20 cents more expensive than other gas stations! Below is the mountain range we drove past in Nevada on our way to Salt Lake, the temp stayed in the 50's ALL DAY today and it doesn't look like it's going to get warm until we reach Ohio or maybe Illinois. Aren't these mountains beautiful, the funny thing is that along this mountain range we passed at least Five prisons and if that wasn't scary enough the DON'T PICK UP HITCHHIKERS signs were.
Oh and thanks to Annie, I finally saw my first tumbleweed. It was blowing across the road and Annie alerted me to it. But I didn't have time to take a picture.
The drive aside from the mountains was pretty uneventful and we passed the time by listening to our last book on tape. These have been a lifesaver and really helped to pass the time. Approaching the Great Salt Lake was interesting, according to my travel book the lake had a strange smell. Well I figured it was an exaggeration. Well it wasn't! The only thing that can live in the lake is a decaying bacteria. The smell, can only be described as a mix of skunk and other pungent materials. Annie says it wasn't that bad, but I thought it really smelled. We pulled into the lake visitor center and to my surprise were asked to pay five bucks to park. Now I try not to be a judgemental person but I couldn't help but notice that the crowd at the center was NOT there to see the lake. All the people were young, wearing black, had died black hair, some had mohawks, etc. Apparently there was going to be a rock concert. We walked across the parking lot passed the crowd over to the lake. We discovered that you cannot walk out across the sand near the lake without sinking so I will bring a little of the lake home with me on my Nikes.
Below are some pics I took. The lake, is quite beautiful.
Salt Lake City was just a few miles down the road. The city was the recent host of the Winter Olympics. It's a really lovely little place with a lot of attitude. Downtown was easy to drive around and it seems like everyone's a walker there so Annie and I parked the car and headed out to a destination I've wanted to see the entire trip, The Mormon Temple. Brigham Young choose the center of the city square for his temple and it took forty years to construct and this is where the LDS is headed. On our way to the Temple, a man asked us for a quarter, we quickly said no and headed on our way. Which was the opposite way he was going. Two blocks away and we saw him again. I had a weird feeling and we quickly walked into the courtyard surrounding the Temple where many people were milling and a peaceful feeling washed over me. The surrounding garden and fountains were very relaxing. My first thoughts looking at the Temple was, "I thought it be bigger" It is a little smaller than I expected but it really is a beautiful building. The Tabernacle where the famous choir is located is just next to it, but some of the men in suits were around talking to people and I didn't want to deal with that so I took a few pics of the temple and we left.
Of course it started raining when we were leaving, so that and the fact that Cheyenne is over 400 miles away we decided to crash in the surprisingly busy Evanston, Wyoming. My mission tomorrow is to find David's beer, b/c I fear coming home without it. Until next time. R
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