The weather forecast today called for scattered showers, so I donned full rain gear today and the reverse-jinx actually worked. I saw rain in the distance and there were wet roads that had been recently drenched, but I rode 400 miles without a drop. I’m truly living a charmed life.
Riding westward out of the Rockies, I stopped at a place called Parachute, CO that’s famous or infamous for being the site of one of the last Old West train robberies. Remnants of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch robbed a train here back in the early 1900’s and took all the gold. A posse of locals, including one guy with a parachute chased them and killed one of them, but the loot was never recovered. Anyway, the ride through western CO and Utah today was fabulous; cool and cloudy, but glorious. I included a picture of an actual blown-down tree in today's post. There are long stretches of big flat valley’s surrounded by high flat plateaus of beautiful sedimentary stone, as well as twisty mountain roads through fantastic craggy rocks that look like scenery out of Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons. Salt Lake City has now sprawled-out alll the way to Provo and it’s just one giant megalopolis for about 50 miles.
After checking into a SLC motel, I watched the first inning of the Giant’s game and they were winning 3 -0, when TNT returned to “normal programming” and my motel doesn’t have the a station carrying the rest of the game. I decided to go downtown to the center of the Mormon Universe, Temple Square. Everything in UT is measured in terms of blocks from the Temple [true]. I’m staying at exit 7,200, which means it's7,200 blocks from the Temple. The Temple, Tabernacle and all the Temple Square grounds are gorgeous. They are also teaming with female LDS disciples from all over the world who swoop-down on everyone who enters the grounds and try to convert them, including me. They told me that the Tabernacle was build entirely from white pine because that’s all they had at the time. The columns were painted to look like marble and the pews were stained to look like oak. The organ has 11,000 pipes and it’s all pristine and beautiful.
I walked a few blocks over to the UT state capitol building and it’s also spectacular. If you’re into skiing or snowboarding, the resorts are world-class and very close to town. My assessment of SLC is that it’s an incredibly monolithic city and a bit salty, but it’s also clean, safe and easy to navigate. On balance, SLC is a very nice city that’s worth seeing.
but...did you "join the club?"
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