After a quick breakfast, it’s on the road to the Spiral Jetty. We head west into very rural country. All the roads have two-lanes. We drive for about 30 minutes and are getting close to the Golden Spike National Historic Site (we’ll come back to that site) and are wondering why the GPS thinks it will take us so much time to get to the Jetty (just 15 or so miles away). We pass the Historic Site and discover why: we are now on unpaved road. Maximum speed is 30 MPH, and that is pushing it. The X3 is doing really well, though, so we are OK.
A few miles later, we look ahead and on the road, a few hundred feet in front of us is a herd of cows. Some are just calves, but most are big milkers who could really damage our car if they so choose. Also, we don’t want to disturb them very much, so I slow down and hope they get out of my way. We believe these cows are all supposed to be on the south side of the road behind a fence, but there is a huge gap in that fence which looks like a sometimes gate that someone has left down. We patiently move ahead and the cows don’t want any part of us. Still, there are dozens of these beasts and we are politely trying to get past them when we notice two cowboys on ATVs trying to herd them somewhere. Only, the ATVs are on the other side of the fence and we and many cows are on this side.
I’m trying to be polite and don’t really know what I’m supposed to do when one of the cowboys rides up, looks me in the eye and yells and motions with his arm that I should plow ahead. (He looks pretty sore at me for upsetting his cattle.) Amy thinks he’s yelling at the cows, but I know better. I step on the gas (but shyly) and sure enough, the cows get out of our way.
Finally through, we are on the open road again, though it is gravel. I set the speed and engage the cruise control and we are now faced with the limits of technology. The X3’s front radar is no longer operational due to too much dust. (The operator’s manual says we have to wipe it with a clean cloth and window cleaner to get it to work again.) Oh boy, now I’m back in the 20th century and have to hold the pedal down with my foot!
Yeah, not really too much of an inconvenience. We travel several more miles to the shore of the Salt Lake without incident and there it is, the 1,500 foot long Spiral Jetty.
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| The Spiral Jetty |
The artist’s goal was to create a work of art that could be seen from space. Apparently, he succeeded, but he constructed the work on the shore of the lake during a drought and a few years later, when the rains returned, the lake rose and covered the work. Seems to have been an OK thing as the artist was into decay and change.
We are glad to have reached it, but enjoyed the trip more because of the cows.
Happily back in the car, we head back east, taking in wonderful vistas of the Lake. We return to the Golden Spike Site. This is the place where the two transcontinental railroads (Leland Stanford’s Central Pacific and the Union Pacific, UP) met up during the race to connect the east and west coasts by rail. This is the actual site that the first two locomotives met. The Golden Spike used to symbolically complete the rail lines is on display at Stanford University. Amy used to show it to every visitor when she was an undergrad. I remember seeing it when I was in high school; I've wanted to visit this site for 50 years! The National Park Service trots out authentic engine replicas every day to reenact the meeting. It is way cool and I am thinking how much cousin Mark W. would love this place.
Presentation over and pictures taken, we get back in the car and head east, back toward civilization. But on the way, we make two stops. First, we take the one-way drive on actual UP roadbed that 100 years ago had rail on it. It gives a feel for the grade (less than 2%) and the amount of work it must have taken to remove all the cuts by hand labor. There was also an interesting natural phenomenon, the Chinese Arch.
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| Amy under the Chinese Arch |
The second stop is a mile and a half long self-guided walking tour called the Big Fill Loop Trail. It is a section of roadbed and rail that was some of the hardest work on the entire line. You walk along actual railroad bed (since abandoned) and observe interesting facts about how it was done.
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| Big Fill Loop Trail |
The work on the railroad was so labor intensive that they only laid down one set of tracks in 1869. In 1905, an alternative route was opened south of here across the Great Salt Lake on trestle, so this area was abandoned and became available, so many years later, to be an historic site. Sweeping vistas on our walk made it more enjoyable.
Now finished with the Golden Spike Site, we head east to I-15. We decide it is best to stop at a gas station before we get on the Interstate to try to clean the radar and re-enable cruise control. For some silly reason, I try to engage it and lo, and behold, it works! I guess all the sensor needed was some strong winds to clean out the dust! We head south, find a little place for lunch, and continue on south past Salt Lake City. Some time later, I see an interesting football size stadium. Wondering what it is, I look for display signs and see “Rio Tinto”. In fact, it is a football stadium, but not for American Football, this is the home of Real Salt Lake. It is really an attractive structure. I must see a match here some time soon! Are you interested, Kevin?
The rest of the drive to Richfield, Utah, is beautiful, but uneventful (except for 30 seconds of rain). We walk from our hotel to our tasty dinner at the “Frontier Village”. The first two sites checked off our list for this trip! I haven’t counted how many more there are…
We are looking forward to tomorrow and crossing into Arizona.
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