Day 5 - Jun 2, 2008 Last updated: 6/12/08 9:00pm PT
Today we spent about 10 hours in the car. Starting in Bluff, ending in SLC. Tomorrow is the flight home.
We stopped at Natural Bridges National Monument. Not much to see here unless you go hiking, and we had too long of a day ahead of us to hike. ‘Natural bridges’ are formed when a stream or river cuts through the bottom of stone, creating the arch. ‘Natural arches’ are created when water seeps down from the top, weakening the stone below, causing it to fall, forming the arch.
We passed through Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, crossing the Colorado River. We stopped when we crossed the bridge over the Colorado River because there was a guy about to jump. He had on a parachute, and his friend were helping him strap in, and a few people were below the bridge on the side of the river watching and running a video camera. I’d have taken a picture, but the guy chickened out.
While we were at this lookout, up comes a guy pedaling a recumbent bike. We are still in the middle of nowhere. I asked him where he came from and he said “Spokane”, as in Washington state. We’re still pretty far south in Utah. And we are over 7000 feet above sea level, and it’s extremely hilly. He’s been going for about a month and had another month to go before he reached his destination of Kansas City. He looked to be in his late 50’s or early 60’s, and was rail thin. He camps out most of the time, but spends some nights in hotels. I’m always fascinated by these kind of adventures. I enjoy reading books about people who hike, bike or something else over great distances. Maybe someday… Nah!
Next stop, Capitol Reef National Park. Here’s Capitol Dome, named because it is supposed to look like the capitol building in DC. Sure, if you say so.
More petroglyphs
A hummingbird. It’s in there. You’re not looking hard enough. Look harder.
Capitol Reef was not as impressive as everything else we’d seen. Maybe if we went through here first, it would have been more impressive.
Many hours later, we arrive in SLC. Years ago, there were 2 Connie’s restaurants in SLC. I never figured out how that happened, but they were actually on the Connie’s website. I Google’d Connie’s SLC and got the phone number to one of the places. They are no longer called Connie’s, now it’s La Pizzeria, but they claimed the recipes were the same. I’m always up for pizza, so we had dinner there. This was the best pizza I’ve had outside of Chicago. The crust was not exactly the same, a little thick, but the flavor was there.
After dinner we decided that we can’t be in SLC and not at least see the Great Salt Lake.
Regarding the flight home, Denise had bought some sunscreen. A small 4 oz container. It was smaller than my deodorant. The limit you can take on the plane in a carry-on is 3 oz. We tried to bring it home, we put it in our plastic zip lock baggy, face down so you couldn’t read the size. Sure enough, they picked it out and made us dispose of it. I can bring pointy metal scissors with 4 inch blades, but not a 4 oz. container of sunscreen. Yeah, I feel safer.