Just spent a sometimes salty, sometimes smelly, mostly subdued two weeks in Salt Lake City, UT. Sometimes we did fun things like saunter through gardens, shop the farmer’s market, and drive on salt flats. Sometimes we did not so fun things like go to the dentist, remove one of the lunky couches from Dyna, and fix the plumbing (yes, again).
Good things about the last two weeks first, because there are more of those and, well, they’re ‘gooder‘.
- Jake found the ‘Up’ house and brought me to it! I love ‘Up‘, and I love this house. So cool.
- We made new friends who wanted to take our more-than gently ‘loved’ sofa. They fed us dinner from the Nepalese cuisine. It tasted great!
- We found a desk to replace the ‘more-than gently loved sofa’. This was also our first ‘Ikea’ experience. Holy heck, that place is a maze of epic proportions. I suggest going to Ikea this Fall rather than paying money to go to a corn-maze. Same amount of initial excitement, followed by irritation at being lost, and finally needing to drink away your failure at navigating the ‘maze’ in a reasonable amount of time.
- We got to attend the ‘Salt Lake County Fair’, which was definitely a bit more ‘carnival like’ than our previous fair experience. We mostly watched the horse-pulls and people. And ate some food.
- We got to hang out with Bob & Janice a few times (& I finally got to meet Guinness, their dog-child). We went some pretty sweet gardens called ‘Butte’ gardens, which is inherently funny.
- We got to visit Temple Square. It was beautiful and so very cared for. And the people of the LDS faith who were there with us were very inviting and friendly. There were A LOT of weddings going on all at the same time, which I thought was very efficient and cost-effective.
- The SLC farmer’s market is awesome. So much local goodness and variety- we went both Saturdays we were in town! There was even a booth run from the ground up by SLC prison inmates and they grew/sold us ground cherries, which may be my new favorite non-candy food.
- We visited our first ‘Bansky‘(s)! And found jalapeño beer at Wasatch Brewery. And it tasted so good.
- We walked around, drove on, handstanded, and licked our way around the Salt Flats. They tasted salty, looked like snow, and made a mess out of Red Rammer’s underside.
- Great news! We float! In the Great Salt Lake! My dad was pretty certain that I wouldn’t float because I have floating troubles, but the Great Salt Lake pulled through.
- For the first time since we started nomadic RV life, we pulled out of a camping space without alarms ringing or pipes bursting. Maybe Dyna is finally coming around to us?
And here are the not as great things from our time in Salt Lake City:
- Jake spent several more hours repairing another pipe from under the sink that ‘popped’ when we closed the slide back in Thompson. Positive: the repair seems to be holding up!
- The Great Salt Lake smelled horrendous. Like really bad. I’m hoping that it has something to do with the large pile of something across the street from where we decided to play in the lake, and not the lake itself. I’m not banking on that though; there was also a very large and consistent congregation of little bugs surrounding the shoreline of the lake.
- The ‘park’ we stayed at (and by park, I pretty much mean RV Park- convenience outweighed serenity on this stop) was the pits.
- I spent 4+ hours washing the exterior of Dyna only to have the sprinklers at the ‘park’ spray her with some gunk in the middle of the night. It wasn’t all bad though- I made friends with a 9 year old boy who told me all about car stuff.
- We didn’t eat any Hawaiian Shave Ice and only ate donuts one time.
We left Salt Lake on Sunday in a slow diesel fueled march towards Colorado. Decided to spend a couple nights at Dinosaur National Park, because, duh. Dinosaurs! Dyna got to rest for a few days without being plugged up to electricity or water or sewage and we got to enjoy a little space and quiet in a legitimate park. Also, we saw tons of dinosaur bones (not like our epic fail of not being smart enough in our previous quest!) We’re parked outside of Steamboat Springs, Colorado now, right next to our friends Bob, Janice, & Guinness. We’ll report on whether or not Guinness eats Jake soon!
