| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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Utah
(with some Colorado and Arizona)
(and a tiny smidge of New Mexico)
A travelogue by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper
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Having enjoyed immensely our trip to New Mexico and
Arizona two years ago, we decided to take another trip to the same general
area, this time covering Utah and southwestern Colorado. (Utah has one
other aspect that makes it unique--it's the only place in the world were
Mark and I are Gentiles. And in fact, whenever I told someone where we were
going on vacation, they would say, 'Oh, going to see the Mormons?' as if the
Mormons were some exotic creatures.) We used many of the same resource
books, including HIDDEN SOUTHWEST, the 'Insight' book AMERICAN SOUTHWEST,
the'Discover America' book on Utah, and the AAA guidebooks. I also read
Thomas Keneally's THE PLACE WHERE SOULS ARE BORN, Leonard Wibberly's VOYAGE
BY BUS, Mark Twain's ROUGHING IT, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's STUDY IN
SCARLET. We also bought a couple of guide books on the trip: Sir Richard
Francis Burton's CITY OF THE SAINTS, Robert Casey's JOURNEY TO THE HIGH
SOUTHWEST, and Allan Robert Powell's UTAH GUIDE. (The latter is very
complete and useful,, but its index is a piece of crap [to put it
politely]--the actual page number is within two of the one listed, but
that's the best you can count on.)
One difference, however, is that while the previous trip included
several large cities (Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and
so on), this trip is through a more sparsely populated area. In fact, with
the exception of Salt Lake City, the largest town we visited had a
population of 13,000 or so.
While I have been calling this a trip to Utah, you can tell by the
title of the log that it actually extended into four different states and
the Navajo Nation (about which I will say more later). The 'smidge' of New
Mexico is a half-mile (kilometer) stretch of Route 160 that cuts diagonally
through the corner of that state when going from Colorado to Arizona and
which passes within a quarter-mile of the Four Corners marker (which I'll
also talk about later). (By the way, I'll give metric equivalents for
distances and temperature. I will not be converting time to a 24-hour
clock, though.)
I should warn you that I am not very good at describing scenery. I am
more a 'how things work' type. I can write a page and a half on how to
operate a Lithuanian luggage locker (and believe me, a full description,
complete with history vis-a-vis the Soviet occupation and parallels with
Estonian public telephones, could easily go that long), but am at a loss to
describe the flowers blooming in the desert, a butte reaching into the sky,
or a vista covering hundreds of miles. I can appreciate them (I think), but
my descriptive capabilities fail me in this regard.
I will also say that I use the term 'Indian' here rather than 'Native
American' because that's the term used in the Southwest by the Indians
themselves (though specific tribal names are even better), and one that is
preferred to 'Native American.' (In the early part of this century the term
'Native American' was also used, but with quite a different meaning. As a
Havasupai pointed out to one of the rangers at the Grand Canyon, everyone
born here is a Native American, so that term is not very descriptive.) I
don't know if it's a regional thing or not, though the actor Wes Studi also
says he prefers 'Indian' and I think he's Plains Indian rather than Pueblo
Indian.
Note also that 'LDS' stands for 'Latter-Day Saints,' another term for
'Mormon.' (The Mormon Church is officially 'The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints.') So when I use that abbreviation, you'll know what I
mean.
Regarding handicapped accessibility, for most parks and monuments the
Visitors Center and other buildings are accessible, the driving tours have
stops which are mostly accessible (a few may have gravel paths a few hundred
feet long to get to a ruin or a lookout point), and the hikes and ruins are
pretty much *not* accessible. You can probably tell which are which from my
descriptions, but check with the various parks and monuments if you need
accurate information. I do *not* recommend many of the sites if you have
young children unless they are either extremely well-behaved or on a leash-
-most of the places we visited tended to have unfenced cliffs with drops of
several hundred feet. While there might be rocks twenty or thirty feet down
to break one's fall, letting your children near them might give you heart
failure even if nothing happened to them.
We flew from Newark to Salt Lake City. I know that many people use Las
Vegas as their arrival point, but we had been to Las Vegas once, and that
was enough (though Hoover Dam was pretty neat). We changed planes in
Houston, which even this early in the summer was already hot and muggy.
This contrasted nicely with the blizzard conditions reported earlier today
in the high mountain passes in Utah.
However, when we arrived in Salt Lake City at 10:30 PM, it was merely
chilly, not snowing or otherwise precipitating. This was a pleasanter sign
than the fact that the rental rate on our car had gone up from what we had
been quoted when we reserved it (apparently the corporate rate was re-
negotiated in the interim, though I intend to check on that). The
difference is about $60 for the seventeen days, and it's still cheaper than
what the other companies had quoted. It doesn't have a cassette player, but
we were able to set up our portable cassette player and speakers to serve
almost as well.
The Motel 6 was ... a Motel 6. It's May, so they've turned the heat
off, but the snow on the surrounding mountains didn't lie, and it was pretty
cold. (Actually, I was reminded of Lithuania, where they also turn the heat
off in May, no matter what the temperature.)
Minimum elevation: 20 ft (6 m) (in New Jersey).
Maximum elevation: 4390 ft (1338 m) (not counting the time in the
airplane).
Distance driven: 5 miles (8 kilometers).
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Breakfast was bright and early (thanks to jet lag) at
the Country Fair. Mark's breakfast featured liberal doses of Tabasco's new
jalapeno sauce, which we haven't seen in New Jersey yet. Contrary to what
one person told me, one does not have to bring one's own coffee to Utah.
Every place here seems to serve it just as commonly as they do everywhere
else. In fact, practically the first thing I saw in the airport was a
Starbuck's. (Of course, we did tend to be eating in the tourist areas.)
However, one positive sign that may be at least in part attributable to the
Mormon influence is the Utah Indoor Clean Act (translation: no smoking in
restaurants or just about anywhere else).
(Oh, and none of our hotel rooms have had a copy of the Book of Mormon
in addition to the Bible. I had thought of reading it during this trip,
even though Mark Twain calls it 'such a pretentious affair, and yet so
'slow,' so sleepy, such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in
print.' [Chapter XVI, ROUGHING IT]) (And I later read Sir Richard Francis
Burton's comments: 'Surely there never was a book so thoroughly dull and
heavy: it is as monotonous as a sage-prairie. Though not liable to be
terrified by dry or hard reading, I was, it is only fair to own, unable to
turn over more than a few chapters at a time, and my conviction is that very
few are so highly gifted that they have been able to read it through at a
heat.' [THE CITY OF THE SAINTS, p. 258])
At 7:30 AM, after taking pictures of the snow on the mountains, we
headed east on I-80 and then Route 40 towards Vernal, and drove through some
of those areas. Luckily the weather had cleared and the day was sunny, if a
bit chilly, so all we saw of it was a light dusting by the roadside here.
(Later, we saw patches at some of the higher passes we went through.)
The 174-mile (280-km) drive to Vernal took about three hours, and we
arrived about 10:45 AM. In Vernal we stopped at the Utah Field House of
Natural History (US$1.50 each). Though it has the usual rocks, local flora
and fauna, and historical sections, it's main attractions are its dinosaur
and prehistoric mammal hall, and its 'Dinosaur Garden with thirteen life-
size sculptures of dinosaurs. Supposedly these are in their natural
settings, but since it was early in the season, the Museum hadn't filled the
pond or the swamp yet, giving the setting a drier look than was entirely
accurate.
Of the Field House, Leonard Wibberly had complained in his JOURNEY BY
BUS (written in the 1970s) of the display of human (presumably from his
context, Indian) remains. The remains he described were no longer there,
though there was a human skull in a case with thirty other mammalian skulls.
(What he described sounded more like mummified remains, with bits of hair
and skin.) I suspect that as attitudes change, the museum exhibits change
with them, though the upper walls are still adorned with hunting trophies,
including a bison head. Well, I suppose that these are really no different
than having the stuffed animals in the cases.
The traffic in Vernal (population 6700) was somewhat disrupted by the
'Temple Ground-Breaking Ceremony' for which we saw signs. Mark asked if
this were for a Mormon temple. I replied it must be, because a Jewish
temple wouldn't have their ground-breaking ceremonies on a Saturday.
We stopped in an IGA (I haven't seen one of those in years!) and picked
up our lunches: dried fruit, fat-free crackers, and fat-free fruit cookies.
As I noted in my log of Arizona and New Mexico, the only way to do a trip
like this and cover as much ground as we do is to:
- Rise early.
- Eat lunch while driving.
- Make no rest stops.
A corollary of these is that you also have no children.
Mark asked me what the Mormons believe about evolution and how they
feel about having the world's largest dinosaur cache here. Good question,
but we don't know the answer. We do know that whoever is living in Vernal
(and there must be a fair number of Mormons there if they're building a
temple), they certainly don't object to using dinosaurs to advertise
everything in town. Giant pink plaster dinosaurs hold up motel signs. More
realistic-looking green plaster dinosaurs invite you in to restaurants. A
big store along the main road is 'Remains to be Seen, selling fossils and
such and having a giant sign outside consisting of two fighting dinosaur
skeletons embedded in a plaster cast as if in a rock face. (These, I am
sure, are not authentic.) Even Sinclair Gasoline has retained the dinosaur
symbol that has disappeared elsewhere. And Dinosaur National Monument (or
sometimes the whole area) is referred to as 'Jurassic Park.' (However, I
sighted nary a Barney. |
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| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
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