Utah

Ah, Utah. I must now make another movie reference. Has anyone seen SLC Punk? Turns out they were right.

Like most of the trip, I planned out all sorts of great things to see in Utah that we mostly skipped in favor of making time. But not today! We were going to see Arches National Park if it killed us, I would make sure of it! Once we hit the red dessert landscape with all of its strange rock formation and signs that read “No Services next 50 miles,” I knew we were not in Kansas anymore. I mean, Tennessee. Well, you understand. It was stunningly different on the west side of the Rockies! I made Trevor take some crazy exit off the main freeway so we could drive through a ghost town. It was creepy--dilapidated buildings with boarded up windows and doors that seemed to have no reason for ever being built in the first place… we did pass a sizable peloton of cyclists out there in the freighting desolate landscape, if you can believe it!



The road winded around and down into a valley carved out by the Colorado River. Again, it was truly gorgeous here. Not in the Hidden Valley way, more like a Road Runner/Coyote cartoon sort of way. Like nearly everywhere else in the United States in July, it was hot, so Trev decided to pull over at a sandy bank and take a dip in the river. It was wide, deep and really quite fast. He changed into his swimsuit and I nearly did, but then a rent-a-camper of Germans pulled up and I was too embarrassed. But I did roll up my pant legs and wade around while Trevor went for a swim. The water was shockingly cold! But did it ever feel good in that dry heat!





Before too long, we made it to Arches. It is a pretty large park, be we allocated most of the day to driving/hiking about. We followed a line of cars upwards into a sort of plateau and just pulled over into a parking lot at any of the rock formations we wanted to see. We weren’t very well equipped for dessert hiking however so we just stuck to the main attractions. Don’t get me wrong, they were stunning! Holes in the side of a rock 150 feet wide and high, enormous “spines” jutting out of the sandy red earth, boulders the size of three-story buildings teetering on the edge of a cliff… I believe these formations were among the strangest and most beautiful things I’ve even seen nature produce. If only it weren’t so hot and we ran out of water! Alas it was and we did and were just as eager as reluctant to leave the park and head to our campsite in Provo, just outside Salt Lake City.

This in itself was a feat of a drive. Straight through the dessert, no services, half a tank of gas, minimal water and only a few hours to drive about 200 miles. The fist 150 or so were trying, but once we hit a small mountain range/national forest, it was much nicer. All the way into Provo, actually, was really nice. I even made the comment that Utah doesn’t seem like such a bad place to live. How wrong I was!

When we got to our campsite and pitched the tent, we went out to look for some food (settled on Indian) and drove around the town a little bit. Provo is pretty large, but it’s center is a cute little college town. We were debating about the alcohol at this point… In SLC Punk, they would drive to Wyoming to buy beer. but why? There seemed to be bars all around. We figured whatever law it was that disallowed alcohol in the 90’s had since expired and bought ourselves a 40 or Tecante. We sat at the campsite and drank it for awhile, enjoying Tecante more than either of us ever had. Oh, but what does this label say? 3.2% alcohol content? What?? Apparently, all these brewers create beer especially for Utah to keep the content under 4%! What a rip! No wonder they drove out of state. I was so infuriated by this discovery, I completely changed my mind about the state of Utah. It sucks. Don’t ever go.