My Birthday
22nd birthday on the road! Pretty cool I thought. We were in Salt Lake City for the first half of the 19th, having stayed with some hospitable relatives of Garon's the night before. Salt Lake was a funny place. I know exactly the first thing you'll associate with the place: Mormons! Am I right? There certainly was a lot of Mormon junk around the place.
The downtown area was full of gleaming impressive buildings, which were more often than not part of the Mormon association. We were there on a Saturday, too, which I think is the sabbath. At the above-pictured magnificent Mormon temple (which non-mormons are not allowed to enter), there were many weddings going on all at once. The place was swarming with guests, (couples in coordinating outfits), and we counted 12 brides. We also saw the Tabernacle, where they sing, the old house of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, the Mormon Conference Center, and the Mormon Geneology Library (you know they have this thing about baptising their ancestors). Kaia and I became paranoid about holding hands, and possibly just generally felt a bit weird in Mormon central. Not sure if that was justified of us. Got a birthday call from my parents outside the temple, but I couldn't really hear them on my crap phone. Ah well.
Around lunchtime we moved onto Moab, Utah, which took longer than anticipated. The scenery along the way got more and more incredible (there is going to be a lot about scenery in this blog for a while). Got into town at about sunset, since the driving once again took longer than expected. We had a lovely dinner in Moab, and it was so good to be with my awesome friends and girlfriend, even if I did find myself a long way from home in an unexpected place. At around 11pm we found out that every hotel in town was booked solid, and had to scrabble around until we found a campsite with a closed office but a spare lot. Camping again! I tried to moan less. It was hot that night but we had a tent made of cool mesh; me in the morning; "Oh hooray. My house is see-through".
Next day we got a late-birthday picnic lunch and ate it at Dead Horse Point, looking over a giant canyon whose name escapes me, (above), part of the Canyonlands National Park. After that we made a few stops at pretty places and then set off for Albuquerque New Mexico, Garon's home town.
The downtown area was full of gleaming impressive buildings, which were more often than not part of the Mormon association. We were there on a Saturday, too, which I think is the sabbath. At the above-pictured magnificent Mormon temple (which non-mormons are not allowed to enter), there were many weddings going on all at once. The place was swarming with guests, (couples in coordinating outfits), and we counted 12 brides. We also saw the Tabernacle, where they sing, the old house of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, the Mormon Conference Center, and the Mormon Geneology Library (you know they have this thing about baptising their ancestors). Kaia and I became paranoid about holding hands, and possibly just generally felt a bit weird in Mormon central. Not sure if that was justified of us. Got a birthday call from my parents outside the temple, but I couldn't really hear them on my crap phone. Ah well.
Around lunchtime we moved onto Moab, Utah, which took longer than anticipated. The scenery along the way got more and more incredible (there is going to be a lot about scenery in this blog for a while). Got into town at about sunset, since the driving once again took longer than expected. We had a lovely dinner in Moab, and it was so good to be with my awesome friends and girlfriend, even if I did find myself a long way from home in an unexpected place. At around 11pm we found out that every hotel in town was booked solid, and had to scrabble around until we found a campsite with a closed office but a spare lot. Camping again! I tried to moan less. It was hot that night but we had a tent made of cool mesh; me in the morning; "Oh hooray. My house is see-through".
Next day we got a late-birthday picnic lunch and ate it at Dead Horse Point, looking over a giant canyon whose name escapes me, (above), part of the Canyonlands National Park. After that we made a few stops at pretty places and then set off for Albuquerque New Mexico, Garon's home town.
posted by susie r at 11:32 PM
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