We arrived in Salt Lake City after a week+ drive through plains, tumbleweeds, burrs, mountains, and winds that made my grip the arm of my car door for the useless illusion of safety. Narrow mountain roads converge in this oasis of flat amidst a tumult of incline; well could I imagine Brigham Young at his followers arriving and announcing, “Yep. It’ll do.”
The city has the most beautiful views of any U.S. city I’ve seen. In Denver the mountains were impending; in Salt Lake they are imminent. Travel a few more miles, and you are in flat salty marshland. The city is visually striking even with the civilization that’s been papered over it.
I might have expected the city to be a bit oppressive, and without a doubt there are a lot of religious people here, but the city is vibrant, with quite a few distilleries and government-run liquor stores pushing through draconian and byzantine state restrictions on alcohol.
The food is also surprisingly good in surprising ways – it turns out SLC has really good fast food.
We ended up not being able to explore the land of inland aqueous sodium chloride as thoroughly as we’d hoped; Ashley injured her knee skiing, and after a month we had to move to a state where her dubious health insurance would pay for her recovery. (Spoiler alert: That state is California.) Still, I think we can sub-divide this one:
