Crossing Utah

Some of us first think of Mormons. A residual trace of religious prejudice, perhaps. Fact is, Mormons are the quintessential Americans, the nicest people, hard-working, well-organized, trustworthy. But in their homeland I suspect they can get a little weird. Just over the border from Nevada there is a billboard. On the Nevada-to-Utah side is an ad for a business opportunity, a smiling man in a suit, a number to call, verbiage suggestive of some sort of Mormonized Amway® scheme. This for the people coming into the promised land. On the reverse, the Utah-to-Nevada side, is an ad for an adult novelty and lingerie shop. This for the people visiting outside the promised land. An interesting statement of the apparent expectations of the people going both directions.



And then the Salt Flat. What a horrific thing for the first pioneers to stumble into. But a lot of fun for teenage boys who’ve been cooped up in a car for nine hours. It’s an interesting natural phenomenon but its edges are worn and torn near the freeway. Tracks where people have driven out onto the salt pan. Ruts where people drove out onto the salt pan when it was wet and no doubt got stuck and yelled at. Train tracks, telephone lines, and a huge object we never figured out, looked like a rusty rocket engine mounted to concrete pylons. We figured either a memorial to some land speed record-breaker or the boiler from an old salt refinery.

(map)



The rest stop water wasn’t working. Nowhere to wash the salt off our shoes before getting back into the trucks, and nowhere to pee. We drove for what seemed like hours but was probably twenty minutes to the next rest stop. It was much more intelligently designed.



Hours later, into the southern desert, flat and mountainous all at once. Price Canyon was a full-scale model railroad set, complete with coal mines. We emerged through the cut after dark to see the great structure squatting between cliffs in the river, brightly lit and ten stories tall, obscured by its own steam, vast machines crawling about like cave trolls under the whip.
(map)