My Adventures Living Daily Life & Traveling the World

Mormon Church

We had several places to go in Salt Lake City today before we move out again. The first was the Salt Lake itself. It’s a beautiful sight, but it smelled like utter shit. The best way to describe the smell is probably tons of dead fish, just a hundred times worse. The pictures I took looked nice, though. I’m glad pictures don’t also carry the smell.

The next stop for us is Salt Lake City’s Mormon Church, one of the biggest in the country. In fact, I didn’t know this, but something like 80% of the people who live in Utah are Mormons! At first I wasn’t so excited. I was never big on religion. I describe myself as Agnostic, but I pretty much am an Atheist and believe in evolution. I still went on the tour with an open mind, however. The sister who showed us around was very nice and didn’t try to convert us at all, for which I’m grateful. Since our tour group was almost all Chinese, the sister guide we had was half Chinese and half White. I was surprised when she told us that because while she spoke both Chinese and English fluently, she didn’t look White at all.

Our next stop was Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a cowboy town that’s supposed to be similar to Deadwood. NOT! This place can’t touch Deadwood. The atmosphere is not nearly as amazing. The only thing of interest here was the town square, as the entrance gates were made purely out of real elk antlers. Other than that, there were western style building and saloons, but the town just didn’t feel authentic. The insides were too modern. Or maybe I just look way too deep into these things!

After that, we were to cross Idaho and drive into Utah, where we’ll stay at Salt Lake City for the night. It was going to be a long drive, along with a nasty Chinese buffet in the middle. I am really sick of Chinese buffets, and this one was the worst yet. There aren’t enough seafood options, so I have to eat meat or veggies, both of which I hate compared to seafood. Also, because they always starve us before meals, I tend to eat more than usual. I’m going to be pissed if I gain weight on this trip, because the activity level is huge compared to the 30 minutes a day I get normally.

I guess it’s better than McDonald’s, although not by much. It’s also a shame we are not stopping at any place in Idaho. I’d love to visit it since I’m already here.

In every tourist area, I have a lot of fun looking at the different places all the vehicles came from. Most of them are from northern or western states. I’ve seen New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ohio, Arizona, California, and more that I don’t recall. Almost no two vehicles next to each other are from the same state, interesting! Rejects from the south like me would rather fly instead since it’s so far, I suppose!

It’s a shame that we only had one hour here to look around. Damn tour groups! The weather was really nice for taking a walk, so my mom and I took a stroll down Main Street, occasionally peeking into a shop or two. We hadn’t had dinner, and we found Oyster Bay amidst the millions of steakhouses, and that was our pick.

Oyster Bay turned out to be a bar as well as a restaurant, which was just fine with me. I ordered some crab cakes, and they were simply amazing. They were way better than what I’d expect from a little restaurant in a tiny Midwestern town. At the bar sat some bikers who looked like they were having a lot of fun, so I joined them. They all looked to be at least 35 years old, but they acted more immature and wild than me, if that’s possible. I loved the topic at hand – poker, and shared some of my insights with them. My mom didn’t like them, and got mad at me for talking to them. I even turned them down when they offered me a drink, so go figure.

My only gripe was that we had to leave soon afterwards and I didn’t get a chance to gamble. I kept eyeing the poker tables as I pass each cute little casino. Vegas may be grand, but this place had its own endearing charm.

Today was much more fun than yesterday, except for being sick on the five hour long bus ride with the sun in my face all day, of course.

The walk on the Presidential Trail was extremely relaxing and comforting. I really needed the time alone to think and jot down sceneries in case I was going to use them for a novel or short story in the future. The Trail was a great setting for an intimate or mysterious scene, or perhaps both. It was shorter than I expected, however, so I took another walk around seeing that I had ample time left over before we were to depart again.

For our last destination, we arrived at a small town named Deadwood. Now this place was really worth my time. With a population of 1,000, it seemed way livelier than it should be. The streets were filled with bikers and pedestrians, revving engines, music and laughter. Each side of the road had many hotels, saloons, shops, and even casinos, all Western style. I felt like I was in a Texan Las Vegas, if that makes any sense.

This morning I woke up at 6 A.M. As usual I was tired and reluctant to get up, but my mom forced me to since we are going on that 7 day trip. When we got to the airport and attempted to check in at United Airlines, we were told by the self check in machine to go to Continental. After a bit of going back and forth, a nice ticket counter lady finally put us through. I guess this is proof that machines won’t conquer the world any time soon.

I arrived at Denver, Colorado after a reasonably smooth flight. Trying to fall asleep in an uncomfortable aircraft seat is always a challenge. When we arrived, we had trouble locating the tour guide among what seemed to be at least a hundred people waiting at the gate, for events ranging from conventions to leisure travel. We called several numbers given to us by the agency and were finally able to get in contact with our tour guide, George.

Our tour group consists of roughly 50 people. I have never traveled in a group as large as this, and I had no idea what kind of shenanigans I was going to have to put up with. I found out soon enough. Traveling with 50 people means there are 50 chances for somebody to be late, somebody to wait on. And piling 50 people into a bus isn’t an easy or timely task. About an hour and a half after I arrived in Denver, we finally departed on the bus.