Salt Lake City

What can I say? It's an unusual place. The drive into the city was frightening and hilarious. We joined the I-89 heading south as we descended from Wyoming and Idaho. 4-5 lanes wide, each way, with everyone (trucks and semis included) overtaking me as I sat on the 65 mile per hour speed limit (about 110 km I think). And I was in the slow lane!

We needed to get right downtown to find out from the tourist office where we could camp, so Jen directed me to turn off on West 200 South, or something like that. We zagged up a few blocks to Main Street and started to wonder why it was just so quiet and low rise. We'd expected a little more from a state capital. Then we saw the post office - we were in Bountiful, the next town north of SLC, with practically identical street names and numbers to SLC which was still another couple of miles down the sameville freeway lined with forests of fast food joints and big box retailers. What can you do but laugh?

Two minutes in the TI office and I had an armul of maps and brochures. Ever the researcher. Campsite found and set up, Jen set off to find gas and a new cooler. 2 hours later she returned weary and distraught. Car incident no 3, the truck had broken down after making horrifying clunking noises. It was a long hot walk to the garage parking lot to collect the rest of our essentials - after a couple of days of rustic camping I was in definite need of a shower. Dinner was gleaned from Seven 11 as we were not about to haul all the cooking stuff back as well.

After the car was cleared of all problems on Tuesday morning, we headed into town for some errands and general exploring. The nearest camera shop was a scorching 20 minute walk from downtown which seemed to be totally devoid of everything except banks, LDS buildings and construction sites. According to the barman at the Beerhive, where I popped in for an afternoon refresher, 47 new buildings are going up in town. Impressive given the current economic climate. The city is eerily neat and colourfully planted with flowers. Every second male is in a white shirt with black trousers and a black name tag.

The shopping mall, with it's own main street, was much busier and livelier than downtown. It had misting devices over the pedestrian thoroughfare in a vain attempt to cool things down. I had Japanese for lunch in the food court, the only non mass produced chain option on offer. Whilst eating my lunch, with chopsticks, 2 different people walked (I could be rude and say waddled) by and commented, to my back I might add, "wow, you sure can eat with those real good". Strange on more than one level.