Trip America: Day 42 & 43 - Hanging out in Salt Lake City

While our stay at Kodachrome State Park was short, we were glad we made the short detour. It was beautiful and was a much needed break from the crowds of Zion and Bryce Canyon. With a long drive ahead of us, we packed up camp early, and hit the road for Salt Lake City.

We were once again impressed by the beauty of Utah. The drive consisted of bright blue skies, rolling green hills and mountains and wide open road. Two of my friends from college, Danny and Marta, had invited us to stay at their house while visiting SLC. Marta texted during our drive and said, "There is a zebra at the gas station in scipio on your way". Well, how could we pass that intriguing invitation up? We stopped at the gas station to find not only a zebra, but baby goats, a miniature pony, an ostrich and several other random animals all inhabiting the "Petting Zoo" at the Scipio gas station. Dan made some friends while I kept my distance.

There really was a zebra - or a "zonkey" as the young kid told us it was called...

After that unexpected gem, we continued north until we felt the urge to stop at another "tourist" attraction - Provo. We were both pretty intrigued by the concept of Mormonism or "LDS" as we were later informed is the preferred nomenclature. We weren't really sure what we were expecting to see but we made a stop at the Brigham Young University and walked around the campus. Outside of the fact that it was a beautiful campus, tucked into the base of an incredible mountain range, we didn't run into anything too exciting. Before leaving town, we decided to do a Yelp search for bars thinking we might grab a quick drink. We learned that was probably not going to happen as our search result brought up Taco Time (taco bar?), Denny's (no alcohol served) and a Japanese restaurant (also no alcohol served). Alright then, on to Salt Lake City!

We arrived in Salt Lake with a few hours to kill before Danny and Marta were off work. Based on our luck in Provo, we were worried about finding a place to get a drink but Salt Lake proved to be slightly more liberal with the alcohol. We found a happy hour (food only, happy hour on alcohol is not allowed) and had a glass of prosseco to cool us down from the heat.

I forgot to mention that we had arrived on quite possibly the biggest holiday for the LDS - Pioneer Day. While most of the state of Utah was celebrating the Mormon settlement of Utah, Danny, Marta, Dan and I enjoyed tacos and beer in their backyard. We did take a stroll later that evening to enjoy some of the fireworks.

More fireworks than the 4th of July!

The next day Danny and Marta both had to work and Dan and I had some work to catch up on ourselves. Dan hit the golf course while I did my digital nomad thing and of course, laundry. After work, we attended Danny and Marta's indoor soccer game (which they won!) before meeting up with my childhood friend for dinner. We had a great dinner with Cory and her boyfriend, Thiago, as they swapped stories with Danny and Marta about the peculiarities of living in Utah. Dan and I were fascinated by the stories and were even more surprised to learn of Zion's wall, which was required at all bars and restaurants for the bartenders to prepare drinks behind.