So we spent the past two days in Salt Lake City…pretty decent city though the diversity there seemed to be a bit lacking, and I don’t think that’s by pure chance. The city isn’t obviously overrun with Mormons though it is obvious the church has significant influence over the city and the state, with their many large buildings interspersed with government buildings. It’s a big city with a small town feel. Most everything in the city is within easy driving distance of downtown and many places have spectacular views of the surrounding mountains and the state capitol area. One of the highlights was a burger joint called Hires Big H. I had one of their tasty, signature Big H burgers with onion rings and their own specially brewed rootbeer float. Mmm, mmm, mmm… Highly recommended if you’re ever in the area!
It snowed pretty hard on our drive into town. Big, fat flakes seem to be the norm in Utah…perfect for skiing but not so much for driving, as Shanghai described. The first day we spent in SLC turned out to be really nice. We thought it would snow again that night and clear up during the day so we stayed another night and planned to hit Park Springs yesterday. I was pretty pumped to test out my new gear for the first time but it wasn’t meant to be. A nasty winter storm blew in from the west and never let up. While I was removing several inches of snow from my car yesterday morning, a guy drove up, saw me in my snowboarding clothes, and told me the highway to Park City was closed. C’est la vie…
We decided to cut our losses and escape to Arizona. But the drive was a harrowing one to say the least. It was almost total white-out conditions during most of the drive through Utah. One minivan driver in particular nearly ran me off the road twice with his/her crazy driving. And there was one steep downhill grade where my car started sliding even though I was moving at a snail’s pace. But we somehow made it down to Arizona unscathed and even opted to drive through the alternate scenic route near the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, the northern road to Grand Canyon National Park was closed for the winter so we made our way to Flagstaff. We checked out the Historic Downtown section last night…well, the bars at least. The bars were very collegey — lots of random, poorly mixed party songs, bad karaoke, and sex-on-the-floor style dancing. We’ll check out the daytime stuff today and hit the southern access to the Grand Canyon. Tonight we’ll hit Phoenix where we are eating dinner and staying with Shanghai’s friend, Jessica.
For those of you tracking where we’ll be, we’ll probably hit an Indian reservation and Lake Havasu after Phoenix. Then it’s off to San Diego and Tijuana before working our way up the Pacific Coast. Looking forward to seeing all of our Cali friends next week! BTW, I update the Flickr photos on a fairly regular basis so check em out. More updates later…
-SammyB