Our final morning at Zion, we got up and drove east out of the park and saw some really great landscapes. We decided to make an impromptu side trip to Bryce Canyon National Park before heading to Salt Lake City to stay with my cousin, Matthew. This was time well spent. Bryce was incredible and the weather was perfect. We took a short hike on the Navajo Loop Trail which was not very long but was quite steep as we descended among the hoodoos. The trail took us right down into the canyon and gave us perspective as to how large the hoodoos are. They're big. I tried to take a few mental photos as we came out of the canyon because the view was really incredible and the pictures just don't do it justice.
So, following our hike, we headed out of the wilderness towards the booming metropolis of Salt Lake City. This drive featured an experimental stretch of highway where the Utah state government, in its infinite wisdom, is testing an 80 mph speed limit. That was cool.
When we arrived, Matthew had beers waiting for us (which we expected) and also had tickets to an NBA preseason game between the Utah Jazz and the Portland Trailblazers (we didn't expect this). So, after a bit of pregaming, we walked over to the arena to drink in a basketball arena. None of us had been to an NBA game before - preseason or otherwise and it turns out that even in a live setting we're not big fans. The biggest thrills were watching the Nu Skin dancers, the wheelchair basketball game in which the mascot participated and cheated, seeing Greg Oden, getting kicked out of seats that we hadn't paid for and were only marginally better than the ones that we had purchased and fighting for t-shirts that had been shot out of an air cannon.
The next day, our only full day in SLC, we had a full agenda. We saw the library. We walked around the Mormon temple/tabernacle/world domination headquarters and narrowly escaped recruitment. We took a drive into the mountains. We walked up Ensign Peak where the Mormons planned the city (this was billed as a "cakewalk" by Matthew which would have been an accurate description if it didn't gain almost 400 feet of elevation in 1/4 mile) and enjoyed a picnic lunch and a view of the Great Salt Lake in the distance. We watched You Got Served (road trip highlight). We went to a great mexican place for dinner called Red Iguana. We drank beer with a picture of a bear with crazy antlers on the label. We played balderdash. I don't know what more you could ask for.
Matthew's apartment was awesome. It was maybe 300 square feet. Even though there were only three of us, it felt like a huge party. Matthew was a great host and made us delicious english muffin breakfast sandwich and gave us his bed to sleep in. So, I've got no complaints.
true story: for a long time, i thought that the golden tablet on the front of the temple was a piece of temporary plywood that was covering a broken window. i guess i must have also thought that that window got broken alot or that all pictures of the temple were from the same time period when the window was broken. how terrible is that?
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