Utahhhhhh

The first stop of my 2011 vacation holiday was to Utah. Now Utah may sound a strange place to want to visit given the other touristy/visitor places to go to in the US, but it was a place that I had kind of hoped to visit at some point in my stay. That or at least one of the other National Park-y type states. Pretty much everybody who I told that I was going to Utah, even only for 2 and a bit days, would kind of look at me with a puzzled expression, “Why?”.

The plan was to fly into Salt Lake City and then head off on my adventures: firstly to the Bonneville and the Salt Flats, and then head down to Moab and the Arches National Park. Now to some people that is going to sound pretty cool, to others I can also imagine that 4 walls of newly applied paint and a few hours to spare sounds far more appealing.

Before I left Indianapolis a group of my friends from work, headed by the newly titled “Crazy Cat Lady”, had given me a list of guidelines to ensure that I wasn’t mugged, raped, murdered or had my lunch money stolen. Some of these were common sense and easy to avoid, whilst other possible scenarios and methods of defence that were apparently possible made me question the mental stability of those that thought them up.

Now, as you can see from the maps below (click on them and it will take you to Google Maps), I was going to be doing a whole lot of moving about. So naturally I needed a car.

With my choice of car, I pretty much went against most of the ‘rules’ that had been given to me and had hired myself a bright yellow Chevrolet Camaro convertible. Nice and inconspicuous. I’ve never been a huge fan of convertibles: partly because I’m a bit of a car geek and think that a removable roof (metal or canvas) spoils the look of the car, and also because the weather in the UK just generally goes against the whole  philosophy of removing the roof from a vehicle. I also hadn’t driven a yellow car since I had the pleasure of owning a Vauxhall Astra Sport which was painted in the imaginatively named ‘Pineapple Yellow’.

After landing in Salt Lake my first stop was to get to my hotel that I’d booked at the airport for the first night. It wasn’t a bad hotel, kind of cheap, but most importantly it had a free shuttle to get me back to the airport in the morning to pick up the rental car. Oh, and it had something resembling a free breakfast.

Collecting the car from the airport went smoothly, although I had to wait 40 minutes as they were trying to ‘find’ the car; how do you lose a bright yellow convertible? After about an hour of driving towards the Salt Flats I pulled over at a rest area and, without the cooling of the wind (had the roof down of course), realised just how hot it was outside. It felt like I was driving towards the centre of the sun! It also felt like my neck had been branded with a hot iron so for the rest of the drive (and until I managed to by sun screen) I kept the roof up and avoided any further sun burn on my first day.

The day that I had at the Salt Flats was incredible. That particular week was actually the World Speed Week (or a similar title), so there would have been plenty of action going on. I got there on the Thursday and, despite there still being two days of the event to go, a lot of the cars had left if they’d been unsuccessful in their class. I still managed to see some racing and cars, but probably not as many as I could have done had I perhaps turned up on the Monday. The whole speed week set up is just spread across the huge expanse of the flats. It’s a pretty weird feeling when you’re standing in the middle of a huge mass of salt with mountains to one side of you and the curvature of the earth to the other, especially when the only sound you can hear is that of rumbling engines.

Now as I’ve already mentioned, a lot of the competitors had already left at this point of the week. This meant that there was no clear designation of which areas were for spectators, competitors, or racing wannabes as everything and everyone was so scattered. I probably drove along the salt for around 2 miles wondering where I should stop, whilst also conscious of the fact that I looked like some special edition Ken (of Barbie fame) in my bright yellow convertible. It just didn’t seem to fit in with all the retro racers that were around the place.

If you click the photo below, it will take you to some of my photographs from that day (and also some from Arches National Park). There were some really cool looking old characters around, ones you could tell that have been going there since the beginning of time. On the other hand, some looked as though they’d tell you all about the experiments the aliens performed on them should you make eye contact with them … I always attract the crazies.

The salt was also great fun for ‘accidently’ burying your foot to the floor and drifting along, rear wheels spinning. So that afternoon I performed by first ever donut (makes a change from eating them). Blame Top Gear; I’m young and impressionable.

Late that afternoon I left the Salt Flats and started the drive down to Moab, stopping to put the roof up or down depending on how much the wind noise was pissing me off. The problem with having the roof up however is that by eliminating the buffeting from the wind, you can hear all the little squeaks that convertibles make. Luckily the car had an iPod input, so I was able to listen to some music I like instead of the country and Jesus fest I had to endure on the trip to Washington.

The drive down to Moab was awesome. As the sunshine was melting into a sunset, the landscape began it’s metamorphosis from the barren, flat land of the Salt Lake area and turned into ‘mountains’ and rocks. I say ‘mountains’, they’re probably not; but when you’ve been living in Indiana for a year and your other major exposure to life has been Norfolk in the UK, even the incline of a wheelchair ramp looks intimidating. The sunlight held out long enough for me to get a good way into the journey, but the darkness soon fell and all I could see were the silhouettes of my ‘mountains’ as a huge lightning storm played itself out across the horizon. This was proper lightning, the sort that David Attenborough should have been narrating on Planet Earth.

I entered Moab at around 9pm at night and was absolutely starving. In my quest of not becoming dehydrated I had bought a 24 pack of water from a grocery store that day but, other than a packet of pizza flavour Pringles and a jumbo US sized KitKat, I hadn’t got any food. Pizza Pringles, by the way, are lethal. Once you pop etc indeed. So anyway, I stopped for some petrol and asked the man and woman behind the counter where would be the best place to get some food. In their attempt at being helpful both to me, and probably the local businesses, they weren’t really very helpful at all. “Pretty much any place on this strip you’re gonna find good food” said the rather portly lady, which I didn’t know how to take as she hardly seemed like she would be the most picky of eaters. I thanked them anyhow and jumped back into the car (roof up) and headed down the main strip through Moab.

I ended up stopping at a relatively legit looking diner, clearly used to serving foreigners as they didn’t bat an eyelid at the accent (!!). They were surprised and showed interest that I was travelling on my own, which I initially found a little unnerving as I began to think this was going to lead to some kind of Saw/II/III/IV/V style torture and massacre. Thankfully my steak and baked potato was served without anymore questioning! I found a little Motel to spend the night, the place was cheap although this was probably due to the fact that they weren’t having to pay for maid service …

I woke up early the next morning and had a surprise when I stepped out of my motel room. The scenery! Moab seemed to be surrounded by the ‘mountains’ that I’d seen many hours earlier, only I could see them clearly now that they weren’t lit up by lightning. As I headed off to Arches National Park, I did what every good (pretend) American does and headed to McDonalds for breakfast, already the sun beating down at such an early time in the morning.

The entrance fee to Arches was very reasonable, around $15 if I remember correctly and it includes maps to help make sure you don’t get lost. The set up of the park is pretty cool; you drive to set points and then you have some trail options to walk to get to the best viewpoints etc. The hike to the Delicate Arch for example, was a real tough one physically. The walk up to it involved navigating a huge incline, the closest thing I can compare it to without being silly being the Travelator from Gladiators. Tough cookie. I thought I was going to collapse at the end of the trek, or at the very least have Kriss Akabusi shouting in my ear.

I was also pretty impressed that I did all the walking and hiking in my flip flops, something I probably wouldn’t do again as some of the trails were challenging with drops that would definitely make you a little bit dead if the worst was to happen. I haven’t told my mum that bit yet, so I’ve probably just earned myself a clip around the ear when I’m next home. Or even worse an “Ohh, tut tut, James” in a way that only Mama Jay can deliver. The views however were worth however many sausages I’m going to be denied at breakfast, as they were simply breathtaking. Here’s a panorama for you …

Arches was an incredibly peaceful place. There was very little noise, and what noise you could hear was provided by either the wind, the birds, other explorers that you’d bump into and have strange conversations with, or, well that was pretty much it. I trekked to one arch and sat alone for around 30 minutes before I saw anybody else, it was amazing. I realise that last line makes me sound like a weirdo, but it was a strange experience. The whole place felt very, very old; it’s no wonder this is one of the major places in the world for finding dinosaur fossils.

By the time the sun began to set I had visited most of the arches within the park and walked an unholy amount of miles. My flip flops had by now became the single most comfortable piece of footwear in the history of the world, but my legs felt like amputation was imminent. It was a welcome relief from both the sun and the exertion to be able to get back into the car and begin the drive back north to Salt Lake and the airport.

That night the drive again was fantastic; the sky was clear, there was no traffic and being a warm night I had the roof down for a little bit. The sky above was pitch black but scattered with some of the clearest stars, and in those few hours of driving I saw 2 or 3 shooting stars. I got back into Salt Lake around 2am and managed to find somewhere on the outskirts of the airport that I could stay the night. The place was cheap and I was amazed they had any rooms left to be honest. The nice old guy behind the counter even gave me all these imaginary discounts for having the US equivalent of RAC cover!

About 8 hours later I was back at the airport and heading onto the next destination for my summer holidays … Goodbye Utah. Thanks for having me.