Utah Saints

Salt Lake City is known for a few things. It's Utah's state capital, it held the Winter Olympics in 2002, the nearby slat flats hold land speed record runs and it's the home of the Mormon church in the U.S.
The snow is coming down thick as we drop down a never ending hill towards the city. Apparently the temperature and the moisture content around here mean that the weather system produces quality snow powder. Coupled with the world class ski resorts around the city and it's easy to see why the Olympics was chosen to be staged here.
A dominant feature of the skyline is the Mormon church that took 40 years to build before the turn of the 20th Century. It's an impressive building and is housed in it's own square in which other buildings connected to the church surround. There's a lot of stigma about the Mormon religion, the Church of the Latter day Saints, and we take a free tour around the Temple Square to find out more.
To be honest Salt Lake City hasn't got much else going for it other than snow related activities, the downtown area is bland and empty even on a Saturday. This is mainly because everybody is strolling around the paved shopping street a few blocks down dressed in awful green garb, it's St. Patricks' Day. In England we use this day as an excuse to get hammered but here in Utah they use it to wear orange wigs and green shorts, I know which I prefer.
The tour around some of the Mormon buildings and temple square must have to rang as one of the most uncomfortable things I can remember for a long while.
We listen to some mildly interesting information about the setting up of Utah by the head of the Mormon church, Joseph Smith. Then we get to hear a load of tosh about how this Joseph Smith fella and another conman Brigham Young are god like and have received messages from god and blah blah. We then sat through some comic sermon from a Jesus voice from around a statue of the bearded dude.
Whilst we filled out comment cards about the tour the two guides, both young women as they always are, sang some god song of some sort. At one point I thought they were going to ask us to prey, I was about to swear loudly but it was all over. The nightmare hadn't ended yet as we went into the Genealogy building to find out some family info for Laura. The Mormons are keen on family history and the like and it soon occurs to me why. They have vast access to family history so that they can look back into the past to, wait for it, baptise their dead relatives to become part of the Mormon church. No wonder they say 14 million people are part of the religion, they never said they were alive or not!
The whole thing is entirely mental and ludicrous. The Mormons kept banging on about being moved on and persecuted for their beliefs, which is clearly more insanity on a part of the Christian nutters already living in America. The way I see it is that one bloke, that Smith and then Brigham Young, decided it would be a good idea to become idolised by a load of people and make some cash in the process. Smith then invents some balls about god coming to him and telling him the true teachings of the bible are not be followed how he intended. Then he sets out to set up a new town, unfortunately not many think this and they think it fit to throw him and his followers out of town. Smith dies, whilst also denouncing polygamy to his death. Brigham Young carries on to the West until they happen upon a flat land beneath the mountains that is some what desert like and unforgiving. They set up the city around a grand church, that is in fact an impressive build. They name the place Deseret. Off the wall Brigham Young now becomes first governor. This guy not only dressed up as the dead Joseph Smith to pretend he'd returned from the grave to declare Brigham the new leader but also that Brigham is now god. Obviously. This all went down well with the willing congregation who took it all in, if only they'd had Google to research this charlatan. The guy had a history of trying to make a quick buck and this was a serious way to get a load of it. So now with God Brigham at the helm he announced polygamy was the god given way. Talk about brash, this guy not only has a wealth of followers, excellent living and the run of the town he now wants to have as many wives as possible. I've always that that this was a fast way of gaining more followers to your religion, by having lots of kids.
The state of Utah was, and to an extent still is, run by the Mormon church. A law unto itself. They were supposedly t-total, alcohol was banned, but as Mark Twain found out they had made a substitute similar to whiskey. The self ruling nature of Utah has run them into trouble a few times. They'd made agreements with the local Indians giving them permission to attack travellers through the state for their goods. Hundreds of people were killed by the Indians aswell as the Mormons themselves. When they wanted to become a state and therefore be a part of the United States the government were not interested due to their legal polygamy stance. Knowing that being assimilated into the union would benefit the state Brigham Young suddenly decided he'd got a message from god saying that now it probably wasn't the best idea to have 60 wives.
The government declared the state to be called Utah, after the local Ute Indians, and not Deseret as the Mormons wanted. But still once Utah became a state it was pretty vicious toward non members, aswell as Brigham's outspoken attitude toward African Americans, calling them 'dumb brutes' among many things.
The government wanted Young out of the seat at the head of Utah and sent in military protection for a new governor. The Mormons fought against the troops for some time until Young finally stepped down as governor. As a side note he also travelled to England to convert more gullibles and many of them moved to America as a result. Preston is said to have the longest continuous strain of Mormon belief in the world. This is probably because at this time Salt Lake City hadn't been set up.
Still, strange things have been known to happen in Utah. One related by Mark Twain was of a friend of his with a telegraph pole contract. This was the introduction of cross country networks in which Mormons were enlisted to erect through Utah. The Mormons decided throw all the telegraph poles into the desert and off mountains and return to their daily business. Apparently this was because it pleased them to get a gentile, non-Mormon, to commit them to a contract in which they felt they had no duty to fulfil. At much distress and cost to Twain's friend. He decided to approach Brigham who then decided to order the Mormons back to work. And that they did. But it just goes to show how they revelled in a feeling of lawlessness toward the Federal government.
Now the church is the centre of Salt Lake City and it's disillusioned believers. It offers people from around the world to come and study here, which is why our tour guides were from Samoa and Kenya. A great way to get new followers is get into the poor areas and offer them a new life in America, must be hard to say no. I've seriously had enough of all this bollocks after half a day and I'm glad when we head out of the place. Utah is an amazing state naturally but the rest is complete guff so it was good to see the salt flats.
The flats are about 2 hours out of town along the humongous Salt Lake. It's a short turning off the freeway to drive up a dead-end road to where the fastest land speed records have taken place. The Bonneville flats are the official name and are prepared each year for summer high speed runs. It's a vast plain of hard salt but it feels incredibly mushy near the edge. Many tourist's cars seem to have got stuck here but I couldn't resist pulling a doughnut out on salt, obviously in an area I'd walked on first. It's hard to imagine the fast land craft in the world has reached upto 600mph here on the mile track. It's straight one way and then another run back and an average is taken of the two runs.
It's freezing here and the wind really does whip around this strange land. It also happens to be near the Nevada border, as the large Casino attests. What's the deal with the gambling fixation here?
We drive back along the wind exposed road surrounded by white flats running into the distance. That's enough nutty religious stuff for me, we get enough in America as it is, so we leave Utah for the state to the north that's 'famous potatoes' weren't famous to me at all.

The Switzerland of America

High into the dense snow of the mountains we curve along steep slippery roads partially covered in slushy ice.
Up and down we go until we arrive at a small town at the foot of a sharp peak. A decent little place that has multi-coloured houses as we head down the short main street.Most places are shut and the roads deserted. We later find out that this small town sometimes gets soo much snow and is that isolated that food has to be helicoptered in.
We carry on as the light begins to fade over another mountain pass to the self named 'Switzerland of America' Ouray.
An alpine looking town with excellent buildings along a short main street that seems well looked after. The whole place is also surrounded by high peaks seeming right next to the edge of town.
Our motel has the air of an alpine chalet about it. The twee décor and piped through swing music, mainly Sinatra, all add to the throwback cosiness of it all.
We awake in this soft warm haven to look outside at equally soft snow coming down into the pocket of flatland on which this town is built.
Large flakes are silently covering the streets around town. It's a friendly place and certainly looks the part but whether I could live out here for any length of time I doubt very much. We leave Ouray and the snow behind us and into the flat plains that also make up 'Colorful' Colorado. We pass through some dull backwater towns, one comically(so I thought) named Dinosaur. Imagine that, 'I'm from Dinosaur.' What a great thing to be able to say.
Unfortunately the town itself was tiny and horrendously grim. Dinosaur footprints and fossils have been found around this area and a few lame dinosaur models stand out in front of crappy tourist shops.
And just like that we're back in Utah and the state continues to unimpress with it's decaying towns and people. Vernal is the town we decide to stop overnight in but, as we soon found out, the expensive motel rooms due to a local construction boom move us on. I'll admit it does look like a building site.
I would rather drive on to a town where the motels are half the price, particularly when most of these places are particularly dull. So, by this ideal we drive on for a couple of hours deeper into Utah.
There isn't much in-between the towns other than pristine white snowfields that resemble white sand dunes and equally as thick.
Altitude is obviously a major factor in the snow coverage here as we descend for mile after mile in ever decreasing snow until we're into yet another bland city that consists of the usual chain everything and roads, not much else.
One saving grave is at least it's a cheap place to stay. The other advantage is that it's close enough to check-in and then have a look around our next and quite controversial destination, the capital of Utah and the home of the U.S. Mormon church, Salt Lake City.

Arched Utah

We've seen the Arch image on every car registration that has gone past us in the last few days whilst in Utah. It's one of many red rock arches within the unbelievable Arches National Park. Just off the highway is the entrance to this stunning park. You instantly begin climbing the u-turned road into another strange Utah world.

We're soon presented with tall and narrow slabs of red rock rising high above our heads. Rounding another corner shows us the distant mountain peaks and the foremost towering red monoliths of the park. Five minutes in and this place is cracking already.

Okay, so it is busier than the parks we've visited in the last few days but that just doesn't matter once you start seeing the crazy natural arches around the place.

Every rock and shape in said rock has been named, some with better names than others. So we have Park Avenue because the rocks look like a City Skyline. Then there's Courthouse Rock, which looks like a courthouse.

Double Arch, which is two arches close together and of course Balanced Rock, which is well you guessed it. But then there's Broken Arch, which is an unbroken arch. Odd. One thing they all have in common, apart from being arches, is that they're all superb looking. Just seeing all these naturally formed red arches below the deep blue sky in the sun of the day is a great way to spend a day, or two as it turned out.

There are over 2000 natural arches within the park in what is another humongous expanse of land.

We walk a few trails, one to Pine Tree Arch(it has Pine trees in it) another to Tunnel Arch(it's an arch shaped like a tunnel) until we get a bit lost on one trail and end up walking in the hot sun for a couple of hours. We slide in-between upright smoothed rocks, scramble over petrified sand dunes and mope across hot open land and through a campsite before arriving back at the car totally knackered. Excellent.

Just 2 miles down the road from the park entrance is the town of Moab. Not a bad town but not a great one in any respect but it's definitely clear that the main business here is related to the park and that mainly consists of mountain biking. Plenty of shops and tour companies also exist for quad bikes and Jeep tours. Arches National Park is yet another giant playground. Not just for overgrown kids either, under one arch a group of kids are sliding and digging around in the sand.

It gets incredibly hot here in summer so I'm glad we're here now, it's hot enough. Saying that, if there's a place to come back to for some amazing mountain bike action then surely this must be one of the spots on the earth.

Before leaving the place we have some soup and bread in the sun overlooking the perched Balanced Rock, that surely would fall if there was a slight tremor and would probably be rolling through town if an earthquake hit.

As for the Arch featured on the Utah registration plate, it isn't that great but it's a simple instantly recognisable symbol of one of the best places I've seen on this trip.

Although the towns of Utah so far have been dull and uninspiring the landscape has been continually amazing. There's still more to come too but we just have to pop out of Utah before we come back to see it.

Another canyon, another river

We stop for a couple of nights in the dilapidated town of Green River. It's nothing more than a street of ramshackle buildings, a petrol station and a couple of motels. We didn't stay here for the dusky ambience no siree. We stopped for a couple of reasons, one the motel is actually decent and really cheap and the other being it's proximity to yet more wonders of Utah.
A German guy chats to us about his U.S. travels and of the small German towns he's visited whilst here. He seems slightly mental but we later realise he could be just slightly pissed after the brewery visits he mentioned in the late afternoon.
We miss breakfast that morning, a damning blow on this budget I can tell you, due to the clocks going forward of which we had no idea.
But the day wasn't to be cursed and soon we were in the stunning surroundings of another National Park which we knew nothing about, Canyonlands. Great name. I could only guess that it was land with many canyons?
At the entrance we see quite a few cyclists preparing for a day out in the park, not altogether common on this trip. Not far from the entrance is a couple of large red rock buttes, these are huge rectangular shaped lumps of rock jutting out of the desert landscape.


Across from the visitors centre there's a decent lookout and our first real glimpse at the land we'll be seeing today. Our first impression is like that of a smaller Grand Canyon but obviously not as wide and cluttered. Either way this place undeniably huge.


Thankfully the park is fairly quiet for a weekend, there are people about of course but it's certainly not busy by any means. It makes for a more peaceful visit away from unbelievably loud Americans, the shear size of the place helps.
We drive the 12 mile scenic drive to the end of the road at a 360 degree view of the canyon and the surrounding area for miles around. This is an odd vast flat land that appears to have just sunk straight down in the places where the river winds it's way. It also turns out that the whole canyon is a lot wider than previously thought, by a long way.
It's a lot easier on the eye than the Grand Canyon too, or maybe I should say it's just different. It definitely looks more defined, the edge of the canyon has a white rim that seems to highlight the view much more clearly than that of the Grand Canyon.

I really shouldn't compare the two as they're different landscapes but I just can't help it when one place gets soo much hype and the other goes seemingly unnoticed. But the fact is that not every place in this varied West of America can be in the forefront of promoted U.S. destinations around the world and the Grand Canyon is one of those quintessential icons for a reason.


We walk for an hour and a half to and back from Upheaval Dome. This is a large crater of sorts seemingly filled with a series of peaked earth of pale blue, yellow, red and grey colours. There is a couple of explanations as to how it's here. One of which is that it's the result of a meteorite impact that unearthed the salty soils beneath the surface.

The other scenario has almost completely left my mind but I'm sure it had something to do with erosion and wind, the usual. Whatever the cause the smooth rock scramble to view it and the sight itself was tremendous.
It's clear that Canyonlands is not a one trick pony. Mountain bikers and old guys in Jeeps ride around the unpaved ridge road. It's a fairly serious undertaking to take on the whole length of it, even overnight camping can be involved, but I didn't pay too much attention to that as I knew it was out of the question for us.

The views keep on coming of this immense land carved by the Colorado and Green Rivers. The power of water and time is an amazing thing.
A shorter walk takes us to a wide stone arch looking out over the canyon and mountains formed by our good old friend wind and time and all that. I take a photo, as often has happened around the world, for some random people stood together on top of this arch. This gives me the idea to scale it myself. For some reason my fear of heights briefly left me. On the other side of the arch is a shear drop down a smooth canyon wall. Yikes! Photos taken I can now climb down. The views were awesome non the less.


There's clearly plenty to do and see here and the long ridge road could be explored without being dull for years if you lived here.A huge varied park that is reasonably quiet and yet stunning.
Utah just keeps on surprising and the next place is featured on the state's car registration plates so it must be good, surely.

Bryce and the Capitol

From Zion we enter Dixie National Forest which has stumpy pinnacles of red rock that could've easily featured in the Arnie film 'Total Recall' as a landscape on Mars. It all looks even odder with the thick snow lying atop the red sand under foot.


An 18 mile road leads one-way along the rim of Bryce Canyon. This place just happens to be stunning as well. Again this is another place I never thought existed on this planet. Thousands of rock pinnacles, called Hoodoos, stand up against the wind in a naturally rounded amphitheatre of the canyon.
Because of it's altitude, just over 9,000ft, and position Bryce Canyon gets around 200 days of icy conditions in a year. Snow lies on parts of the rocks and the different shades of oranges and reds look superb as the light fades for the day.


That night we stop in the tiny hamlet of Tropic on the edge of the national park. Luckily we just get into the only open restaurant before it closes....at 7pm! They sure know how to live it up here! At least the food was good and the motel room had a good heater, handy in this chilly climate. Just when we had the slight inclination to camp for the night the temperatures up on the bulletin in the Visitors Centre instantly put a stop to that. -14 degrees Celsius overnight. No thank you.
More stunning views from various view points along the icy edge of the long canyon's edge before we move on. The stunning views continue outside the park and through the couple of small settlements along the road to Capitol Reef National Park, of which I knew nothing about.
It turns out that Capitol Reef is in fact a huge crease in the landscape due to large shifts in the tectonic plates. The land has a Death Valley quality about it with multi-coloured layered walls of rock all over the show. In many places large straight-edged red rock shoots up vertically towards the sky and fans out nearer the floor showing different layers of colours.
We drive along a narrow road that soon runs out of tarmac and becomes a dirt trail squeezing between overhanging rocks and cliff faces. We take a walk along a dry riverbed and scale up smooth rock to water pools spotting petrified trees along the way. It's hard to imagine that wood thousands of years old turns into rock but it does and looks superbly yellow, black, purple and green striped.
We also see ancient petroglyphs carved into the rock by native Americans centuries ago still looking vivid on the rock face. Characters are visible, possibly hunting, along with the odd sun depiction. Further along the trail are the wall inscribings from the late 1800's from American pioneers who forged a trail along the riverbed. Not quite the same as the petroglyphs, a bit like 'Jeff was ere 1880' and so on.
We walk a trail along a gushing river leading up towards a huge natural rock arch sculpted by wind over many years. It's huge and voices, mainly of obnoxious teenagers, echo around us.
On the way to Capitol Reef we'd seen a few trucks pulling trailers with ATV's and scrambler motorcycles on. We stop overnight near Capitol reef in the middle of nowhere at the only open motel and it's packed full of bikers. A few older guys who seemed to have biked straight here through the mud are hanging around the entrance and trailers full of bikes are everywhere.
The landscape around Capitol Reef is grey and strangely undulating. All of a sudden we see where all these bikers are spending their time. Guys jump over huge mounds of earth by the side of the road and off into the distance. Motorbike trails cover the whole area. The whole area is a giant playground and it's just a case of parking up getting on yer bike and ride. There's almost a quarry look to the place but somehow it all manages to look good.
Then we're back on wide open plateau again with distance mountains ever present in the background. A policeman has pulled someone over nearby an overlook to the mountains where we're parked. By our car is a conglomeration of animal skin and hooves but no blood or flesh. Odd.
Further down the road a group of young lads of about 16 are chasing each other by the side of the road near their huge brand new pick up truck. I just knew that one of them would run out into the road and of course that's what happened as I approached at 65 miles an hour. They didn't even look once. If I'd have arrived in that spot a couple of seconds later there would've been a serious mess. Thankfully we were just far enough away not to have to swerve into the sand of the roadside.
We drive on as black clouds point down at the desert and tumble weeds roll across the road at speed, a storm is brewing.

Iron like a Lion in....

Driving on through the Grand Canyon we pass the nearby Glen Canyon Dam which we were told was letting a huge amount of water out for 36 hours in a 5 yearly release to maintain water levels. It turns out that nothing was happening and we only saw it on TV days later. Still, the Glen Canyon seemed picturesque enough with it's deep blue contrasting with the red surrounds. Clearly a popular place for boating too. Bloody windy though.



Zion National Park is in the South Western corner of Utah and it's nothing short of stunning, no surprise then that it's Utah's most visited park. Huge scarred mounds of rock tower over the narrow strip of tarmac weaving it's way through the park down below.


The smoothed domes of rock once were mighty sand dunes and over time have solidified.

A mile long tunnel cut into the rock in the 30's delivers us into yet more monolithic stone, some vertical and smooth others craggy and triangular.
Even just entering Utah can't help but be staggering. Red, and sometimes yellow and purple, landscapes with scattered Indian habitations. Stepped red rock mountains and wide dusty scrub land make up an hour or so of driving. Sometimes the road ends literally where the vertical precarious rocks begin and it's clear rock slides are common.


We pass through a majority Indian town called Page. This was an odd place in a way as it's the first predominately non-white town we'd seen. The kids on the streets seem happy enough unlike the adults who seem largely miserable. The housing is dilapidated and overgrown with weeds wrapped around rusting vehicles of all sorts. This seems a common theme in many towns we've seen, shells of cars rusting away and seemingly thrown about the area randomly.


Back in Zion, the name actually mean 'Heaven', and we take a couple of walking trails through the snow and ice and past semi-frozen pools of water atop soft sand, also covered in snow, on which freezing clear water falls.


Groups of Antelope prance around looking nervous at anybody or thing that gets close. We pass under stone arches and caves in the rock dripping with ice cold water that seeps through feeding hanging moss and the plants below.
We walk along a fossilised sand dune trail leading us around the edge of a deep canyon which brings us to more stunning views. This place truly is jaw dropping. I think we've taken more photos here than any other single place and I'm not even totally sure why. I think it all came together at once, the good weather, the stunning place and the relative quietness of it all.

The sun constantly changing the rock faces in front of us throughout the day and the shadows of mountains flung across oppositely faced mountains.


It's difficult to rely the beauty we saw in the two days we spent here. Utah is off to a great start.