Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City was the opposite of Chimney Rock. Chimney Rock - a bit of a let down. Salt Lake City - whatever the opposite of letdown IS.

First of all, I stopped at a McDonalds about 20 miles before getting into the city. It was right near the base of a big ski jump that had the Olympic symbol on it. I had forgotten they had hosted the Winter Olympics. Even without checking bank statements you knew you were in a rich area. The types of cars, how people acted, the way they rode bikes a lot. I can't explain it. It just reeked of richness. All the families seemed to have a couple of blond kids that just gotten done with soccer or lacrosse practice and were on the way home to count their money. They didn't act uppity, but they did seem to act like - We won't be uppity, but yeah, we know we're rich.

Utah's claim to fame seems to be national parks and Mormons. They've got a lot of each. The Mormon buildings are all contained within one city block. The temple is impressive. I'm pretty sure they don't let just anybody in there, so I didn't even try. But it was cool looking from the outside. You could go into the tabernacle and look around. Again, cool. I'm upset with myself. The night before, Wednesday, at about 9:20 p.m., I found out the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practices between 7:00 and 9:30 on Wednesdays and anyone can go hear them. In the words of Charlie Brown, "Arrrrrrrgh!" So I missed out on that, but it was neat being able to go inside.

I was walking down the street and noticed a bunch of people with shirts that said "Polynesian Cultural Exchange". When I first glanced at it I thought it said something about polygamy. I thought they had moved on from that? Anyway, my bad. During this whole time I had to work a bit at not being judgmental about the fact that I think Mormons have a few goofy ideas. Putting those aside it was very interesting to see that area.

I also walked up a hill to see the Utah Capital - very nice. I walked over to see where the Utah Jazz play and I happened to end up standing on the corner of John Stockton Drive and Karl Malone Drive.

I'm not sure I would have gone out of my way to see Salt Lake City, but since I was passing through, it made for a very nice morning. Another nice city, that I went through the previous day was Cheyenne, Wyoming. Again, very unexpected. It would be a great place to live. It's not too big and not too small. It happens to be the capital of the state, so it doesn't seem like the cattle town I had pictured. It didn't seem to have any run down areas. All very nice and adorable. You would probably have to put up with a boatload of snow for about nine months of the year, but I could live with that.