I’m sure there’s a good LDS reference to resting and recuperating in Salt Lake City but I’m not really up on my Book of Mormon. We rested so much that I didn’t take a single picture in Salt Lake City. A first! So I’m including a picture from a previous visit to Salt Lake City.
The drive out of Yellowstone was lined with small towns that seemed to be mostly cabins, chalets, gift shops and gas. Jayne’s quest on this leg was to get a hotel booked from her phone for tonight. Coverage in the eastern Idaho was really spotty and strange. We’d be driving along and then get 3G coverage. Two years of iPhone ownership in Iowa City, a college town, with no 3G coverage, yet sporadic 3G coverage in Trude, Idaho. As soon as she got coverage it would disappear. And with the lack of a mobile friendly Hotwire, it was quite a chore. I pulled off two or three times when she thought she had coverage. As soon as I would slow to a stop it would disappear. We eventually got two nights at the Airport Inn.
I stopped for gas at one of those gift shop/gas stations while Jayne booked the room. This place was primarily gift shop. I think gas was an after thought. Every inch of the walls were lined with those lame Western paintings of raccoons chilling with some deer or large birds flying out of a brush. This theme was continued in the bathrooms where pictures were kept high enough you wouldn’t pee on them but low enough that a big elk stared you in the eye while you pissed.
We set Pocatello as our goal for dinner. It is a college town (Go Bengals!) and even though we were rushing we thought we’d take a little time for dinner and get something other than roadside fast food. We wanted college food. Wing Street came up on a restaurant search and I was like, “Yeah that’s good and college-y. Chicken wings! I think I’ve seen those in Columbus.” Jayne rebutted that she thought it was associated with Pizza Hut. It was Pizza Hut.
We ordered from two super flighty chicks. One was named Sunday. Probably after her parents’ favorite day to go to church. When I gave her my phone number (area code first), she asked “You’re from Wyoming?” as if that was the only other state option. I figured there’d be a bond between us from being from states that are confused with each other but there wasn’t. Surely attending Idaho State she has heard, “That’s in Ames, right?”
We sailed on in to Salt Lake City with a late arrival to our Airport Inn complete with drained indoor pool in the lobby (!). We didn’t care though we were tired.
The next morning we searched for a good breakfast place. It was called Ruth’s Diner and it was up the drive through Emigration Canyon on the eastern edge of the city. The drive seemed to be a hotspot for bikers (non-motor) and after passing several we found the diner by itself on the right. The place was hopping. Kristen Stewart’s understudy seated us and we could tell we were at a place a little more suited for us than “Uncle Brigham’s Pancake and Decaf Coffee Hut”. I saw tattoos, beards, cleavage and even heard swears.
The food was sinful too. They brought out biscuits that Jayne still talks about and a blackberry jam to spread on it. That would have suited me for breakfast but we had a crab and avocado omelet and steak breakfast burrito on their way. Those were also delicious.
After I dropped Jayne off at the Genealogy Museum, I tried to run some errands but was mostly unsuccessful. Most importantly our Forester was due for an oil change and we were about to enter parts of Utah that probably don’t have a lot of Jiffy Lubes. This Friday they closed at 4:45 or something weird like that so I missed my chance. We wanted to head out bright and early Saturday morning so we left without an oil change.
Jayne was pretty disappointed with her results at the Museum too. Her family seems small and spread out and I think she was having trouble getting a lead. She struggled finding information on people she even knew existed, like her dad.
That evening we had dinner at a Biaggi’s and walked around an outdoor mall where we bought another warmer sleeping bag. This was purchased as a precaution because at this point we hadn’t decided what we were going to do next. There was talk of just going on to Denver or Santa Fe or continuing our original plan of Arches then all the other southern Utah national parks and eventually Grand Canyon.
The next morning we got up and decided to head to Arches to at least try to stick with our original plan. We were a day behind but we’d figure it out on the road. Before we got stuck on the road too much though we HAD to get our oil changed. We pulled off in Provo and hit a Jiffy Lube. It was pretty Jiffy and by 11 or so we were out of there. But now we were hungry. We went for our default and found a Mexican grill nearby called Cafe Rio. Little did we know we would be to this day wishing we were closer to one for the pork burrito/salad. It’s a chain so on the way back through when moving out to California we stopped off for a fix in SLC. I could go for one right now.