Salt Lake City

We left Boise after our two days there and headed off to Salt Lake City.  It was a 345 mile drive, so we headed off really early at the crack of 10am. Well, it was meant to be earlier… but everything just takes longer with packing up, getting ready for the trip,  do your computer stuff (always takes longer), close down your computer, oh wait – just one more email, strap the bikes back on, fix the straps that you used to strap the bikes on, strap the bikes on, put the restraining bars in the fridge, clip up the shower doors, clasp the bedroom wardrobe, empty tanks, disconnect, where’s the cat, bring in the slides, pull the cat out from where it’s stuck, hitch up to the truck, raise the feet… and go – it just takes longer than we thought.

The scenery around Boise and the road to Salt Lake City was pretty interesting, vast, mountainous and straight – we like straight! We stopped off on the way and refueled (with 5th wheel attached – woo-hoo – we’re pretty confident!) and fooood ….  I had my 1st ever Wendys… our son Kyle’s always told us when he’d had a baconator, so a baconator it had to be – the lady behind the counter asked what size I wanted, she had a heavy accent (yes – I have trouble with that too!) when I said “pardon?… she said “how big a heart attack do you want” … ah, ok, strike the ex-large, double, mega cheese extra bacon… I settled for a medium one!… Dorothy (the ever sensible) had a salad …

Returning to where we left the truck & 5th wheel  neatly parked behind another one, it looked like it had been abandoned, the other RV had gone and it was just sitting slap bang in the middle of the parking lot… oops – try to pretend I just don’t care, and get in.

As we approached Salt Lake City, the hills got higher, the road got wider and the traffic got heavier. We had checked out the RV park location and were navigating well through the lane changes to position for our exit about two miles ahead, when this big class A motorhome (an RV like a bus) just zoomed from the outside lane and cut right in front of us. This monster was also towing a car which was swaying wildly behind it (yelling, save, save me… well it looked like it was), I managed to swerve right over to the hard shoulder as he slammed his rig into the place I had been and sped off with his tail end still swaying badly (save… meeee…..)… we couldn’t believe it – it all happened a bit quick… but I did spot him in time and had the space to get out of his way, so it wasn’t so bad – just a reminder to keep your wits about you. The traffic ahead was thickening up and we spotted him a few vehicles in front of us – we both said – “I bet he’s going to our RV park”. Right enough. We turned into the drive for the Pony Express RV park… and there he was juddering to a stop in the distance. When we pulled up, the driver – an elderly man (I’m being generous here) came hobbling right up to me and before I could say anything, he had apologized profusely, gave all his excuses and told us what a bad day they were having… he blamed his wife, who had appeared dejectedly beside him, for distracting him, she was bemoaning that their credit card had been refused at a gas station… eventually he had chewed himself out so much and was so shocked at what he’d done… I didn’t berate him.

We got settled in to the park, it was very nice, we parked up just fine and got all connected up no problem – we went shopping that evening and decided to go on a City tour the next day – we’d get picked up right at the door.

 

 

The city tour was really good – explaining that Salt Lake City had just been desert before the first Mormon explorers came looking for a place to make their own and established a very nice city through lots of hard work and heavy lifting. We learned a lot, the city, the history, the culture… the food was good too – all in all we were very impressed by the city, more enlightened about the Mormon faith and we loved the Organ recital in the tabernacle. The people we met couldn’t have been nicer and more helpful.

We did try to see the Salt Lake – we have seen it from the air and read about all the migrating birds who love it there… but no matter which road / track / field we drove over… we couldn’t get to it

So – just a short stay – but a very nice place to visit.