Enjoying time in Northern Utah

 

October 10^th – Old friends reuniting

In general, we have been avoiding big cities as we believed there would not a lot of things for the three of us to do (Kendra, Paul & Rupert); at least that is what we always assume.  Salt Lake City is the first “big city” that we actually visited as Kendra’s childhood friend lives in the greater area.  

After taking full advantage of the hotel room and their complementary breakfast we left Evanston around 11:30am.  After arriving in Salt Lake City, it was time for laundry, a blog post before heading out for dinner.

We had planned to just go out for dinner with Kendra’s friend and then finding a camping spot but their hospitality was incredible and before we knew it, we had a bed to sleep in, access to a shower and the WIFI password. Thanks Coulam family for your hospitality.

October 11^th – SALTA LAKE CITY

We woke up and decided to download the songs from the musical The Book of Mormon to get into the Salt Lake City mood.  The first things we decided to do was explore the trendy neighbourhood of “Sugar House”.  There wasn’t a lot going on outside, but the area was full of pubs and cute shops so I’m sure on a weekend or evening it would be just buzzing. 

We ended up going to a coffee shop in the area, which had amazing people watching.   

We then headed to The Avenues for some great views and wandering, before heading downtown to do a lot of the same.

We then headed back to Kendra’s friends house and joined her and her family for a hike in Mueller Park towards Elephant Rock.  This is easily our favourite time of year as the whole area is in full autumn colours.

Our favourite hike and place we went was Ensign Peak for sunset which looks out onto the Salt Lake Valley, the downtown area, and numerous other areas.  It was definitely the perfect way to end the day. The skyline looks amazing at sunset and lit up at night.

 

October 12^th – Back up North

When we left Alaska, we told ourself we wouldn’t backtrack unless it was required, well we broke this rule.  We had been told that Logan UT was a beautiful area with a must see valley area with some amazing hikes.  Well, we had a few days to kill as we were waiting for Kendra’s credit card to arrive at Kendra’s friends house, so we headed north.

This was a great decision as Logan Canyon and specifically the hike to some Wind Caves were well worth our time.  However, Paul, as the fearless leader he is decided to make an out and back trail into a loop.  He had scouted a goat trail that he was convinced would link up with the main trail so we started down this much less used trail.

The trail went beside a cliff face, into brush and most adventurous ended with us having to scale down an 8 foot rock face.

Paul went first and somehow found the foot and hand holds by “carefully” jamming his foot into different areas of the rock.  Once down it was Rupert’s turn.  He was placed halfway down, while Paul coxed him to walk a little further, against Rupert’s better judgement, to the edge where Paul was able to just barely grab him and place him on the ground.  Next was Kendra’s turn who was very unsure of this idea and with some help from Paul was able to make it 6 feet down the cliff face where she decided to “jump” butt first into Paul.

After such excitement we decided to find our campsite for the night, cook some pork we had in our fridge from a week ago and relax for the night.

Yup you guessed it the pork was off; it was green and smelled horrible.  Kendra kept assuring Paul it would be fine, but Paul refused to eat any of it.  Kendra followed suit after seeing Paul physically throw the cooked meat in the garbage.

 

October 13^th – Time for Tea

We left our campsite and explored downtown Logan. Logan is home to Utah State University so it felt very much like a college town with lots of bars and restaurants, all of which were closed. 

After walking around, we decided to go to Brigham City as Kendra read it had a cute downtown.  Unfortunately, we disagreed with the internet, but it did have a chocolate shop and a tea store with a little patio.  We decided to grab a tea and once again do some people watching.

The tea shop was extreme, hundreds of different types all brewed to perfection.  This is probably our favourite non alcoholic drink location we have been too in this entire trip.  If you are ever in Northern Utah Monarch Tea House is a must visit.  People watching wasn’t as good in Brigham City as it is a typical US city that has a lot of sprawl.  It appeared most people watched us as they drove by the tea house with one person even yelling at us say ‘WHAT DID YOU GET?  DO YOU LIKE IT?”

Humorously the owner had just been to British Columbia and was telling us how much she enjoyed it, especially Icefield Parkway as well as Banff and Jasper. We didn’t have the heart to tell her that that is Alberta. We also told her the area we were from and she was pretty sure she would have remembered it if she had went there, but then told us how she took the Cassiar Highway down (so she would have had to go through Prince George).

We continued driving South, stopping for a cider break outside of Salt Lake City before heading towards Nevada.  We had heard there was some salt flats near the Utah/Nevada border so we pointed our compass west and started driving.

 

October 14^th – Salt Flats!!

If you are ever in the Northern Utah/Nevada area, specifically on interstate 80, the Salt Flats are a must do and are totally amazing.  They also taste as salty as they look!

This was the go to spot for road trippers and van lifers as the whole area was full of people taking pictures of themselves and/or their vehicles for the ‘gram.  Well obviously, we had to do the same so after spending some time walking on the salt flats we made the decision to drive the van 500 meters or so onto the salt to do our own photo shoot.  It was so fun setting up the van we decided to use the van properly and cook some lunch.

Our next stop was West Wendover NV, a super small scale Las Vegas type place for all Salt Lake City Residents who want a sinful weekend away.  Of course, that meant our first stop was at a casino, but we didn’t end up gambling.  We had some boring life stuff to do so instead sat in a 24 hour Starbucks and did some work.

We ended our night looking for camping, we were recommended to go to Blue Lake, but the road was one of the worst roads we had ever seen.  To say it was mostly washboard was an understatement, there was washboard on the washboard.  It was evident that most people who traveled this “road’ had driven on the shoulder/in the desert.  After about 250 meters Paul decided that we would be taking this off road road that looked better than the real road, and although there were some scary angles that made us feel like the van could have easily gone onto its side if a large enough breeze pushed us, we got to our campsite.

Our campsite was horrible, there were mosquitos every where and they were vicious.  Not only that there were signs everywhere saying that the US military used the area for weapons testing.  We decided to leave.

After tackling the off road road one last time we ended up finding an amazing spot on top of a hill a place that we decided to make our home for three nights.

 

October 15^th – Nothing

You know those days at home when you wander around the house not doing much of anything.  You do a bit of cooking, bit of cleaning, bit of work but that is about it?  Well, that was today, we didn’t do much.  Highlights would probably be having a fire, sunset and watching the Mole on Netflix.

 

October 16^th – Metropolis

Paul didn’t want to do another nothing day, instead he wanted to explore northern Nevada so he spent an hour searching for everything to do off the I80 in Nevada.  There was not a lot.

He did decide upon a ghost town called Metropolis, a community that was built on home, prayers and agriculture, but the community ended up facing “biblical plagues” (according to one article we read).  There were fires, a drought as well as insect infestations resulting in the town literally running dry of water and people.  All that remains is the basement portion of the school as well as the archway where the kids would have entered the school and the foundation of an old hotel.  It was interesting but not worth the 3 hours round trip drive.

Finally, we decided try our luck at the casino.  We both walked in with $20 of which Kendra walked right to the penny slots and started playing.  Paul walked towards the blackjack table and started playing.  After playing 3 hands, Kendra let Paul know that she had lost all our money and was going to go to Starbucks.

Paul continued to play and tripled his money, so together we won $20 at the casino.

As an aside, blackjack in West Wendover is really weird.  It is only played with one deck of cards and all cards are dealt facedown with the exception of the dealers second card.  There is no banter at the table as you don’t know what the other players have, so you can not cheer them on when they hit 21 or act sympathetic when they bust.  Paul wasn’t a fan of this style of blackjack.

 

October 17^th – The Return to Great Salt Lake

We made our way back towards Salt Lake City, but decided to check out a few sites along the way.  The first was middle canyon which after climbing up a dirt road to the top of a mountain had a view of the worlds largest copper mine.  Pretty neat.

From there we went to a house designed to look just like the house from UP.  Definitely a good picture opportunity, but we wished it was jammed between two skyscrapers for that true authentic feeling.

We had hoped to see Kendra’s friend again but she and her husband and three kids have very busy lives so unfortunately, we were not able to connect, so instead we headed towards a campsite for a night.

Kendra had picked out one she thought would be perfect, the only issue was it was up a dirt road near the summit of a mountain.  We started our ascent but were surprised when all the other 2WD vehicles seemed to slow down or stop, but we continued.  The next hour was a harrowing drive up a road that the internet said was “challenging”.  We feel this was an understatement.  The other vehicles we encountered were side by sides, dirt bikes and 4x4 trucks, all of which seemed bewildered by a 2WD minivan climbing up the mountain. 

Thanks to Paul’s excellent driving we arrived unscathed; but Paul decided to do nothing but sit by the fire for the rest of the night.

 

 

October 18^th - Utah’s inconsistent drinking laws

We dragged our feet this morning, dreading the drive back to civilization, so we had a very late breakfast (lunch) and did quite a bit of TV watching, but alas it was time to tackle the road once again.

Similarly, to the drive up we were the only 2WD vehicle I saw until we were almost at the bottom.  Paul’s favourite moment was when we turned a corner saw a 4x4 truck and the driver got a big smile and started to laugh as he waved at us.  I doubt he expected to see an “extreme” minivan captioned by some cooky canucks.

Thankfully we made it back in one piece, but learned we had some time to kill, so where is best to kill time, well a dog friendly brewery of course. 

Utah has some pretty interesting drinking laws, with many of them seeming to be inconsistent.  At one place each person had to have their own bill and settle up individually, i.e., Kendra had a bill and Paul had a bill and they could not be combined.  At this brewery dogs had to be vaccinated for rabies and we had to have proof that he had been vaccinated on us. (Thankfully we did).  At another place still we could not have a beer without ordering food first.  Each place we went to was roughly the same, a dog friendly brewery that sold food, why we were treated different at each one is a mystery, but they all blamed the state of Utah.

Another annoying drinking law is related to their state liquor stores, they will only accept US drivers’ licenses or passports as ID and they are required to ID everyone, but only care about the person purchasing the liquor.  We have our passports hidden/locked up most of the time thus rarely have it on our person

We got word that Kendra’s friend was finally free so we made our way back to their house for a night of socialization.  We truly can not express our gratitude for these people, absolute gems!

 

 

October 19^th – Disappointment in Canada Post

We had been hanging around the Salt Lake Area for many reasons, but one big one was to get Kendra’s credit card.  Kendra’s credit card had been delivered to our place in Prince George and my sister had run out and shipped it “Worldwide Priority” to Kendra’s friend’s house.  Canada Post said it would be there the next day, unfortunately it was 5 days later and when we tracked the package it said it was “Delayed”.  Today, the tracking status changed to Delivered, in PRINCE GEORGE!!!!  We paid worldwide priority (i.e., next day shipping) for it to take 5 days to travel a little over 5 blocks?!?!?!

Paul’s sister enquired with Canada Post and no one at the post office understood or could explain why what happened happened.  So, the credit card needed to be resent.

We had heard that there was a fun city close to Salt Lake City called Park City.  We started to look for places to stay but were surprised to not see any campgrounds in the area and many messages saying that they heavily fine you if they catch you camping in the community.  Luckily there was an Airbnb close to downtown that was within budget!

Park City is a lot like Whistler, it is where many of the Olympic events occurred when Salt Lake City hosted the Olympics. This community is 2.4 km above sea level, which supposedly really affects some people, so much so that the grocery stores sell air.  Historically it is a mining town with hikes to hold mines and mining infrastructure.  This was something we had to see the second we arrived in Park City.

After a hike we decided to go to the local brewery as it was Trivia night; our name the Toonie Twosome.  We lost, in fact we came in last, but at least we had fun (damn American history, sports and pop culture questions- even the question about the Queen was related to American Presidents!).

 

October 20^th – Window Shopping in Park City

Today we had planned for a lowkey day.  We would get coffee and people watch then go into the cute stores on the historic main street, then head to the distillery and plan our next couple days since Canada Post expected delivery date was going to be Monday October 24^th. -_-

Well, we did all those things, the best part was watching a woman with her mother talk at the coffee barista’s when they were done talking with her, then have her try to exchange her mother’s meal.

Then Paul decided he wanted to checkout the surrounding area and some views that come highly recommended from TripAdvisor.  Well, this turned our lowkey day into a day of almost 20,000 steps with walks to viewpoints and a hike Blood Lake.

The benefit of getting all those steps is that by doing so we felt we could be very lazy in the evening having a bottle or two of wine and watching stupid videos on our computers/phones.