Every Thursday night in summer Salt Lake City has a twilight concert series in the park - so straight off the Greyhound bus (yes I survived that journey!) we headed to see The National and try the local beer.
Friday saw us signed up for a 'make your own ring' workshop at the Leonard museum - you can see us deep in concentration:
The finished products
Then we hit up one of the bars with a roof terrace downtown - the Green Pig, where the selfie fail arose lol!
Jo imparted some vital information to me about the city and Mormons (we did a drive by past the temple - it's like a Disney castle!).
Apparently all the grid roads in Salt Lake City are so wide because back in the pioneer days it was decreed that they should be wide enough for a covered wagon (with debatable numbers of horse or oxen) to do a U turn.
Also all Mormons wear their sacred garments under their clothes - apparently a nightmare for dress shopping if you don't want your garments showing...!
Still need to see Book of Mormon though, I'm sure that will be a source of info.....
The next day fortified by a bacon sandwich we headed out to Antelope Island to check out the Salt Lake.
The island is across a causeway and the Great Salt Lake is very similar to Lake Mono - it has lots of inflows but no outflow - evaporation increases the salinity and brine shrimp are the only living things in the water.
Hence it smells quite fishy... Apparently they do fish these shrimp - but not for human consumption, they make fish food out of it.That's where I recognise the smell from!
The brine flys feed on the shrimp and both provide excellent sources of nutrition for migrating birds moving through the area.
The island also has lots of wildlife and despite the heat an almost Scottish look about it....
As well as the antelope the island is named after, they introduced a herd of 12 bison early in the 1900s and now there are c700 bison on the island.
They can cause quite the traffic jam - you don't want to take on one of the adults even with a 4WD!
We hiked a short trail to get easy views of the island and the lake
Then we headed to check out the ranch where we could practise our cow girl skills
Think I'm more Gangnam style!
We got to see a beautiful sunset through the inversion layer (yuk but beautiful still!) with the mountains reflected in the lake:
It being Saturday night we headed out to celebrate with the other roller derby girls not at Roller Con with a show of Black and Blue sparkles at Willies 'the dive bar of dive bars' (I thought it was alright - until they *made* me drink Fireball whiskey.... :s )
We were covered in glitter and so was the car....
Sunday we headed to Park City to check out the ski jump show (they jump into a pool as practise before the snow comes).
It was pretty awesome - if you're brave you can even try out the baby jumps yourselves, however it would take quite a while to get to the level of the professionals who are all hoping to get into the Winter Olympics team.
I also managed to pick up the T shirt that summarises my current situation:
That and $2 mimosas - it's my kinda place! Definitely need to head back for a ski season!
Thanks to Jo for putting me up and putting up with me! Next stop Denver...
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