Salt Lake City
We said bye to Moab and started our way to Salt Lake City, the landscape changed completely as soon as we left behind the immense rocky formations and got near the green mountains with their snow-covered peaks. After four hours on the road, we arrived to this city at the north east of Utah State, know among many other things, as the Mormon Capital.
The Mormons’ Vatican, just a way to describe it, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a church initially formed by Joseph Smith in 1830 and that now has almost 15 millions of followers.
Leaving theology at a side, Salt Lake City is beautiful, with great architecture and immaculate clean. There was no traffic or anything out of place, it’s a very well planned city ready to continue to develop and adapting itself to new times but maintaining its beauty and elegance. A very singular place where older traditions and style coexist with modernity.
We visited the main temple and the administrative offices of the church located next to a very special building which used to be luxury hotel and later was bought by the church to be converted in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Inside this beautiful building we could see details that made us feel on the Europe of the 1700s. A very nice lady gave us a tour and explain its history and current uses. Surrounded by exquisite chandeliers, marble pillars and elegant rugs, we visited rooms and halls that now are being rented for private parties. A wonder that we had to visit even though our schedule is very tight.
After the respective pictures at the church, we went to visit the Government Building of Utah, a work of art that I can only describe with pictures.
After this short visit to the city, we decided to skip the Cruiser Fest event, which although we had planned to go, we realized it was still 4 days away and we couldn’t wait since we were already a bit behind regarding our schedule, so off to Grand Teton NP in Wyoming we went. As always we looked for secondary and more entertaining roads, off the highways. We took a road that showed such beautiful views that we didn’t pay attention to the signs advising that the road was closed 17 miles ahead! After 15 miles, we finally notice the road closure, but we didn’t want to go back, so after studying the maps and the help of the GPS, we found a shortcut that would take us to our destination at any cost. It was the best decision because that road, where we road for many hours, showed us a magnificent landscape with deer making us company along the road.
This was one of those roads that made your adrenaline rush since you don’t know what the next curve will bring or if the road will really take us to the highway. It did take us to the highway and we could continue with only two small setbacks: we had to changed one of the headlights that burned out and…something that had to happen sometime, we were stopped by the police! At first we didn’t understood what we had done, but the officer explained us that we had taken too much time to changed to low lights when we crossed with him coming from the opposite direction (supposedly you have to dim your lights at a distance ofb500 feet, but..why the heck they don’t used meters??!), after showing the officer our documents he let us go, we think he really stopped us because he was curious…finally we got to Jackson, where after one hour looking for an available hotel, we flung on our beds and went to sleep, we were so exhausted!!
