Page 2 | Western Road Trip 2017

Salt Lake City the First Two Days

The Family History Library

A trip to the world-famous Family History Library was mandatory for us.  In fact, it was the first thing we did after renting the Forester at the airport.  It was Saturday afternoon and we knew the library would not be open on Sunday, and Monday was to be our day to pick up the truck camper.  Laurie is very interested in family history and looks forward to returning just to take advantage of the resources and available at the library.

Most of my photos during our two-day stay in SLC are mere snaps.  We don’t particularly like cities and Salt Lake City is no exception.  All I can say is thank goodness for GPS and cell phone travel apps, our favorite being mapquest.  Salt Lake City is absolutely covered with highways, merges, double cloverleafs, ramps, exit only lanes, etc.  

The Hampton Inn and Dee’s Restaurant

The Hampton Inn further from the airport (there is also a Hampton Inn close to the airport where we stayed at the end of our trip) was nice but also had two highly prized benefits. First, the sliding windows in our room actually opened!  I hate it when hotels install a stop on the slider which prevents the window from opening more than a few inches.  The second reason we liked it was that across the parking lot was a really fun family restaurant.  Nothing gourmet.  It is called “Dee’s” and there are at least two of these family owned restaurants in Salt Lake City.  It’s the kind of place you go if you want a good burger and fries, a milk shake or perhaps meatloaf and mashed potato.  But don’t forget the homemade pie.  The strawberry pie is wonderful, though for some reason I don’t have a photo of a slice.

Bacon Blue Cheese Burger.

Cobb Salad

Banana Cream Pie

Antelope Island State Park

On Sunday morning (our second day) we drove to Antelope Island State Park out on the Salt Lake.The traffic was reasonable. We were so lucky it was not a weekday.  There is swimming, camping and at least one marina.  It was hot and dry.  That is not surprising because you are essentially on the desert.  The 28,000 acres of wide open spaces were nice, though distant views were hazy, and it was fun to look for the wild American bison.  The bison are not indigenous, but a few were introduced in the 1890s as a way to protect the then near-extinct species. Today the herd is managed at about 600.

Snowbird. Skiing until June 18!

Can you believe it? Skiing available June weekends until father’s day!  After visiting the desert and Antelope Island we headed for the mountains just outside of Salt Lake City.  Within a couple of hours of seeing bison on the desert we were arriving high in the mountains at Snowbird. There  was quite a party atmosphere at the base lodge, even though the skiing seemed so sparse.  Skiers were taking the tramway to the top and picking their way down, sometimes removing their skis or snowboard to get to the next skiable section of snow.  

The final image below is from Alta, a bit further up the road and at (I assume) a somewhat higher elevation.  Though there seemed to be more snow at Alta, it was closed for the season.