[Way, way back to Tuesday, 17th July...]
Up on the hill overlooking Salt Lake City is their capitol building, which looks very much like the capitol at Washington D.C. It’s a steep climb, made all the more difficult by the stifling heat, but it’s a very pleasant spot – calm and serene – the kind of place I’d come to meditate. And although it was hot, it hadn’t yet rained...had the curse finally been lifted???
35 A.D.
Two weeks today we fly to New Zealand. Just thought I’d mention that.
Back at the Las Vegas bus station, before all of the religious nonsense kicked off, a Swedish girl spoke to me and provided me with two great nuggets of information:
- Not all Swedish girls are standoffish and reluctant to talk to a foppish English chap like me.
- Greyhound has gone crazy for passenger overload this year. She’s been riding the buses for the last three summers and she’s never known it so bad. So is the economy to blame?
That second point explains a lot, though it’s never been so bad that the police have had to be called. They almost did on the overnight journey from Vegas to Salt Lake City. Fortunately we’d been second and third in the line, so we got straight on board, but it was packed to the rafters and one guy had to be turned away. Behind us was a woman and a man whose conversation we could overhear. Well, Tim heard it better than I did, and he pieced the following together:
- Woman got separated from her sister and strange man took the seat next to her.
- She offered him 5 dollars to move so her sister could sit there.
- He said he would think about it for ten, but she didn’t have ten on her so they stayed where they were and the bus got moving.
- And Jamesy went to sleep to the sound of him constantly trying to make unintelligent conversation and her reluctant and ever-shorter replies.
- Suddenly I flashed awake at the first drop-off point and there was some kind of commotion behind me with the bus driver standing in the aisle. The man had got off the bus to stretch his legs and the sister had taken her chance to steal his seat.
- When he came back, he complained that it was his seat and he’d been sitting there and he wanted it back.
- The bus driver said that if he didn’t sit down in the new seat then he’d be forced to call the police, at which point the woman casually said she’d simply say the man had touched her when she was sleeping.
- The man backed down and took the new seat.
I know that wasn’t exactly a job for the Flying Squad, but after 30 days with Greyhound it makes me wonder that sooner or later the state police are going to be called for something, especially from the stories one hears from fellow travellers. Anyway, sorry for that little interlude, back to our main story...
Salt Lake City is very picturesque and surrounded by mountains – I just wish we hadn’t driven through Utah under the cover of darkness and I’d got to see some more of its spectacular scenery. I’d read in the guidebook that there was a real chilled-out pace of life to the town and we definitely needed that after Vegas. This perspective was reflected in the number of bums we saw sleeping rough in the streets immediately past the bus station – definitely the most of any town so far, and even though there are worse views to wake up to than the Utah mountains, it’s still not great.
Did I say in the last-but-one blog that we’d be staying with Mormons? Oh yes, I did. Well, we did check out some couchsurfing hosts and were a whisker away from booking in with one, but we had to be realistic – either side of our one night stay in Salt Lake City is a night on the Greyhound, and we couldn’t risk the unpredictability of couchsurfing forsaking a good night’s kip. Therefore we checked into the Camelot Inn which, when we saw it in the warm light of day, may also have been forsaking a good night’s kip.
Yes, it’s Camelot all over – Tim and I are Lancelot and Galahad, and all we need is our very own Guinevere and Morgana. The hostel is very small (cosy???) and run by Arthur, known as a bit of an eccentric, but also very welcoming. He makes you feel at home, in a being-several-thousand-miles-from-home sort of way. When people ask us where we’re from in England, we keep it simple and just say Liverpool. This usually triggers the response of “Oh, The Beatles!”, but Arthur mentioned football, not “soccer”, but “football”. What a good lad!
We needed a nap by the time we’d checked in (way past 3 p.m.), but we were awoken from our dozes by a knock at the door. Enter the Camelot Inn’s excuse for a plain clothes bellboy asking if he could take the fan away to clean the dust out. Sure, go for it! And he brought it back soon afterwards, perfectly dust free. And then Arthur came a-knocking to check the guy had done the job correctly (he’s short-staffed and hiring new help). As someone who’s had more than enough experience with dusty bachelor flats, the fan looked just fine to me.
[Fan is just out of shot.]
Come the evening, we went, we saw, we conquered yet another restaurant where they filmed Man Versus Food. This time it was Crownburger, said burger apparently being the pride of the town and featuring a huge and very tasty amount of pastrami beneath the top bit of the bun. Mmmm...
Obviously Utah is the official state of the Mormons in the US and another well-known fact is that Mormons do not consume alcohol. Spending just the one night in Utah, would the Grayboys respect such behaviour and abstain? Hell, no! We strolled to the nearest 7-11 in the warm evening air and bought the biggest tinnies we could find, breaking our own personal bests – 32 fluid ounces! That’s 0.946 litres, people! Salt Lake City is 4,500 feet above sea level and apparently intoxication occurs quicker...really? Nope. The sales girl at the 7-11 informed us that all beer they sell has to comply with state law and be no more than 3.2% - they’re smart these Mormons! Well, less scary than the missionaries from last night.
[The picture doesn't do its size justice.]
We slept fine in our hot little room, despite the lack of aircon, and went into town next morning to see the sights, predominantly Mormon-based sights, but that was fine. First up was UMOCO, or the Utah Museum Of Contemporary Art. One of the exhibits featured a film of Michael Winslow (the guy from Police Academy who makes all the noises) imitating a selection of classic typewriters. Great stuff! I find anything to do with censored material in 20th century Communist Europe fascinating, as I’m sure you do too, and I enjoyed staring at a collection of unofficial photographs taken by an official Slovakian state photographer - each to their own! There was also a huge tower built entirely from books, which represented the fall of hard copy knowledge in a Babel-like manner, or sumfink like dat. Whatever it meant, it looked good.
After lunch, consisting of a “machinegun burger” from a Belgian frites and waffles place, we headed for the Conference Centre where the guide book said they give free 45 minute tours and don’t try and convert you on the spot. “Dwight” (what a fine American name!) was the guide for just the two of us – we waited around in the hope that others might join the party, but there were no takers. The building is only a few years old, but it hosts conferences of all kinds, not just those related to the Church of the Latter Day Saints. Dwight showed us the main auditorium, featuring a gigantic organ, the longest pipe of which was 45 foot, the smallest just three quarters of an inch. We then got to see lots of religious paintings depicting scenes from the Book of Mormon, which weren’t really my cup of tea, but fair play to him, Dwight didn’t push the hard sell – he was more interested in our world tour than if we were of any particular faith.
The Conference Centre has an interesting roof garden, the east side of which is basically concrete to represent the barren Utah valley that the pioneers crossed when they were kicked out of Illinois, and the east side is designed in the form of a “desert garden”, full of the vegetation they discovered upon deciding to settle on the site of the city. You see, I was paying attention! From the roof we had an excellent view of the main temple across the street. Not being of the faith, we couldn’t go inside, but the visitor centre featured a model with a cross section showing the various rooms. As Dwight said, “It’s not secret, it’s sacred.”
Our next stop in the Temple Square area was the Family History Centre. Having worked at Smedley Hydro for several years, I’ve done my fair share of family history as part of a double act with my father, the master genealogist. We got as far back as official records could take us, but there was always one mystery that we couldn’t solve – one of my great grandfathers was married four times, but we could never find his birth certificate. Death cert, fine, all four marriage certs, check (despite him lying about his age on some of them). Also, we’d never tracked down the record of divorce from his third wife, and we suspect he may well have been a bigamist before he married my great grandmother. Getting back to the present day – the Mormons have a massive collection of genealogy records from all around the world and I was hoping I would get lucky here and find out the truth about my great grandfather. So...what did I find? Only the marriage certificate for his fourth wife, which we already had! Oh well, guess the mystery continues.
An aside – anyone remember that episode of Only fools and horses when Del and Rodney go to America and everyone thinks they’re Australian? Well pretty much everyone we’ve spoken to in Utah makes the assumption that we’re Australian, English being their second guess. Maybe when we get to Australia the locals will think we’re from Utah!
My time in Salt Lake City was coming to an end, and even though we’d only stayed one night, we felt happy that we’d got a good feel for the place. It may not be the most exciting stop in the world, but it’s clean and friendly and I like the overall vibe. Even the dodgy neighbourhood felt perfectly safe. Now evening has arrived as I write this in Macdonalds, preparing for what is arguably the most off-the-beaten-track leg of our journey. Tonight we get the bus to Reno where we hire a car and drive down to Yosemite National Park for all kinds of outdoor action. Maybe we’ll meet a bear? It’ll be interesting to come across something more grizzly-looking than us!
