It was my turn to drive the day we headed for Salt Lake City so I didn’t notice the countryside so much as I was concentrating on “stay right, stay right”. I ended up on a six lane interstate heading in and out of major towns. I tried to stay in the slow moving outside lane but it was also the lane that cars entered and merged into. It was inevitable that I nearly had a collision with a trashy black car whose driver wasn’t watching. Needless to say my husband drove for the rest of our holiday!
There are so many towns along the I-15. Some looked like they only sell petrol and combine harvesters and the local population all live in beautiful but old farmhouses out on the plains or at the foot of a mountain. Other places were small sprawling cities that took up every bit of flat open space between the surrounding mountains and sometimes the suburbs even seemed to crawl up the low lying slopes. You could never run out of petrol or die of starvation because there is either some kind of habitation within a few miles or someone will drive past. Compared to Australia, there is nothing desolate about travelling the Interstate.
We passed hills covered with light grey sage brush, a smaller cousin to our Spinifex, and groves of dead ghostly trees; mountains covered in pine trees with spruce trees breaking up the blankets of dark green with shades of yellow, pink and pale green; miles and miles of open fields and prairies, yellow with the last heat of summer and first colours of fall. You could easily imagine buffalo roaming the plains, an Indian posse sneaking up on them with bow and arrow and a line of wagons coming down a dusty track. I doubt the landscape has changed in two hundred years.
Driving into Salt Lake City was a terrifying experience with 6 lanes of traffic and the GPS telling me to drive through a tram substation but we finally made it to our hotel with all our limbs, if not our nerves, intact.
SLC is huge, smaller than Perth in population by only half a million but with a huge urban sprawl. We were only there for an overnight stay so we didn’t get to see much. The hotel was close to a large university and my photowalk took me around four blocks of shady old rundown houses fit only for poor party-hard college students.
Most noticeable about Salt Lake City was that it was hot and windy (which apparently turned a local burn off into an emergency evacuation that day); I could smell bread (we were across the road from a pizza place) and lavender; beautiful big trees still green from summer lined the suburban roads even if the front yard gardens were covered in black plastic and sand; and all those poor college students rode pushbikes everywhere.
The city was founded by Mormon pioneers who were escaping “hostility and violence” in their previous homes in the mid-west. They faced prosecution from the government for their practice of polygamy which was officially discontinued in 1890, however fans of Big Love know that the practice has just gone underground. If you’re at all interested in the subject check out www.mormoncurtain.com.
I bring up the Mormons because the locals will have you believe they run the entire state. Reception at our hotel in Salt Lake almost apologised for the light beer being the only kind available in the bar around the corner. Nearly 50% of the state population is Mormon so since they are a majority, it stands to reason that many members of the state’s government are Mormon. The church is not in direct control of the government but the people are naturally conservative, and vote conservatively and that reflects in the state laws. Utah is one of the few states where alcohol can only be purchased in government licenced stores, and gambling and abortion is illegal, something the rest of the US sees as a backward attitude. At first it seemed a bit strange to me as well after coming from sin city Vegas but then I realised it’s exactly the same in Australia.
Can you imagine a bunch of laid back Aussies in Utah? I read the kids the riot act on best behaviour and manners and had to reign in my swearing completely … but only until we got to Idaho, which is a whole other story!
