Strange day today.  Our plan had been to do a hike that our friends had told us about, to a natural hot spring waterfall that’s a popular bathing spot.  But when we found that it was a 2.5-mile hike each way, and the weather was going to be over 100 degrees, we didn’t think anyone would be much in the mood for a hot springs soak.

So, we figured when you’re in Salt Lake City, what do you do?  You go to the Great Salt Lake, of course!  Surely this must be a big tourist destination, with nice beaches, right? 

Turns out, not so much.

The first clue should have been when I looked at the map and remarked to Bob, “It’s really strange – there’s almost nothing near the lake at all.  Not even any roads.”  But undeterred, we located a “Great Salt Lake State Park” on our map, and figured that was just the ticket.  When we arrived, we found a deserted beach behind a chained off parking lot with an ancient sign saying “Beach parking, $5”.  There were some other people parked outside the gate and we asked them about swimming places – and even though they were locals, they were not able to think of any place to swim in the Great Salt Lake (clue #2).

At this point we noticed two people way off, actually wading in the water.  At the same time a van full of Asian tourists parked next to us, and they started heading toward the beach.  So we figured we’d give it a try.  Things only got weirder.  On the way across the large stretch of beach, we noticed that at some point well in the past there had been some sort of bird holocaust.  The remains of dead birds were scattered around the beach.  Then the smell hit us – sort of a low tide mixed with rotting animal smell.  Then the flies.  When we actually reached the water, the smell and flies receded, so we did wade in a bit.  At that point, we found the water to be teeming with tiny shrimp (and the surface largely covered with what I assume was floating dead shrimp). 

You’ll see from the photos that it actually appears to be a beautiful place.  But none of us really wanted to get too deeply into that water.  It was shallow for a long, long way out.  It’s apparently 70% salt, too salty for almost any fish or plants.  I talked to the other people who were actually swimming, who turned out to be a local guy and his daughter.  I felt a little relieved at this, figuring he still seemed healthy, but he then confessed that he had never swum in the salt lake previously.  Apparently this just isn’t done in Utah.  (Public service announcement: He also told me that all the black stuff we could see in patches on the ground was shrimp poop.  He said it gets harvested, then sold to hotels in Las Vegas who use it to make “black sand” beaches.  So you should probably avoid those if you’re ever in Las Vegas.)  The biggest mystery remains why the van-load of Asian tourists chose this spot to visit.  Maybe as an example of Western decay.  As I told the girls repeatedly, at least we can tell our grandchildren someday that we went into the Great Salt Lake.

So we said farewell to the not-so-great salt lake and went to a nearby different state park on a different lake.  This proved to be substantially more appealing (despite the weird layer of green algae floating near the shore), and the girls had fun swimming for a while before we moved on.

Then it was on to Arches National Park in Moab, Utah.  It’s a stunning place – words can’t do it justice.  There are huge red rock formations everywhere (some of which are arches, hence the name), rising from a carpet of soft red desert sand.  Driving to our campground at the far end of the park (Devil’s Garden), we couldn’t stop gasping in amazement at everything we were seeing.  Unlike Yellowstone, this park is a nice manageable size – it has one main 18-mile road running through it, and most of the hikes and famous formations are accessible from it.

Our campground is also stunning – we all immediately agreed, the most scenic we’ve ever been in by far.  We’re nestled among the rock formations, looking out across the desert with our tent on soft, fine, red sand.  The kids immediately threw off their shoes to run in the soft sand and scale the rocks.  (The only downside to this campground is the lack of showers.  This is a substantial disadvantage given that you end up sandy and very sweaty with the 100+ degree desert temperatures, and if you were foolish enough to visit the Great Salt Lake you may also have a crust of salt on your calves.)  We got there in time to prepare a dinner feast (including a watermelon, sweet corn, and tomatoes that we’d gotten at a roadside stand) and attend the campfire program on local animals.  Chances are that everything we own will end up coated in sand (despite our strict foot-brushing requirement prior to entering the tent) but we still think it’s worth it.

***

From Bob:

Hey, the tent’s back.  And it’s sitting on a nice bed of soft bed of fine red sand.  This is the grooviest camp ground in the world.  Everything is red.  Red sand everywhere.  Big red rocks for our tent to hide behind.  Sunburned Europeans. It’s the Devil’s Garden.  Sounds like another Grateful Dead song.

                AND, when it’s sunset, which it was not long after we got the tent set up, everything gets even REDDER (except the Europeans, who turn orangish in the fluorescent lighting of their rented RVs).  There is no campfire ban here, thanks probably to the large amount of fireproof sand in all directions.  The Nation Park Service is not very generous with their firewood prices: we bought two packages for $5 apiece, and each has about eight pieces of wood in it.  No doubt the wood has to be shipped here from somewhere.  While the trees around here do look pretty flammable, they are sparsely spread around and they’re not very big.

                In fact, we should all be proud of the way the Park Service is trying to fulfill its mission without wasting a lot of money – aside from gouging people for firewood. When you enter a park, you get a map and a newspaper if you want one.  If you lose your map, you could as for another one, I guess, but they’re not out in racks everywhere where people can just pick them up and toss them around.  Certain sections of the parks have their own maps at little stands that request a 50-cent donation per map, or that you return the map to the rack.  You don’t see a lot of maps lying around and I think the way they’re distributed has something to do with that.  We can also rest assured that these parks – the big western ones, at least – are lightening the wallets of people from all around the world.  Most of the towns we’ve visited seem to survive mainly on tourism, and they treat foreign tourists well.

                In many cases, we’re in rather the same boat as the foreign tourists, as was clear in our trip to the Great Salt Lake.  It’s a beautiful place, but it smells awful (every time I pass the dumpster on my way to the bathroom here I have a Salt Lake flashback).  Pretty much everyone seems to know this except us and those two vanloads of Asian tourists.  We all hiked across maybe 200 yards of salt crusted sand, amid dozens of dead birds in various states of decay.   They didn’t know any better than we did.  We did find that it didn’t smell so bad once you waded in a few hundred feet.  Unfortunately for our fellow tourists, they did not venture off shore.  If we run into them again, I’ll let them know.

                As for now, we’ll rest comfortably knowing that we don’t have to go anywhere for a while and maybe we’ll spill some food wantonly because we can.  We are now officially out of bear country, and the kangaroo rat and grasshopper mouse do not inspire the same fear as does the grizzly.