Desert Driving

After a restful night in Salt Lake City, we woke up, loaded the car, and headed out to see the Great Salt Lake. We decided to see it at Salt Lake State Park. It was raining when we reached the park.  Pretty sure that Rose brought the Washington weather with her. As we exited the car, an overwhelming smell of saltwater pervaded the air, imagine the smell of those shells we would bring home, then forget to take out of the car. Wow, potent!

 We walked to the Visitor's Center to pay our entry fee and do a little browsing. Immediately upon entering the facility, there is a HUGE chunk of salt! Seriously, it was bigger than if you lined up Ollie & Gizmo. Think a young Arnold Schwarzenegger's thigh... No joke.  Apparently the Morton Salt Company just found it floating in the Lake. The Great Salt Lake varies in salinity from 6-26%. To give you a comparison, the Dead Sea is about 30%. The Great Salt Lake is divided in the middle by a railroad track (not sure which genius thought that one up). The southern portion of the lake, where we visited, is about 13-15% and the northern portion is twice that! As the level of the lake drops, the salinity increases causing the water to become super saturated and large chucks of crystallized salt appear floating on the surface. Despite it's immense size, the Great Salt Lake is relatively shallow. The Park Ranger told us it is about 30 feet at it's deepest and that the bouys, visible in the distance from the center, signified a depth of only 6 feet. We took pictures and explored the marina adjacent to the Visitor's Center, finding a cache and walking the dogs. We dried off the crew and loaded up for the next portion of our journey. 

 We stopped for breakfast at Chick-Fil-A (again, yummy), and hopped on the interstate for a few miles before catching US Highway 191 out to Moab, Utah. 

The highway out to Moab had us passing through some very beautiful, though desolate, country. It is so different to be surrounded by towering cliffs of gold and red. We pulled off at a random viewpoint only to find out it was the site of a robbery by Butch Cassidy. And, of course, there was a cache there! That's pretty cool. 

As we drove into the town of Moab, there were plenty of the cutesy shops one expects in a tourist-driven town. There were also numerous advertisements for different tour companies, 4x4s, river rafts, ATVs, zip lines, and jet boats (just to name a few). Mom immediately decided she wanted to do one of the tours (and Rose was all for it)! After we got settled into the hotel, we gather some interesting brochures and called to make reservations for a jet boat tour down the Colorado River the next morning.