Salt Lake City

I didn’t know much about our next destination. I knew it had a high percentage of Mormons living there, but that didn’t worry me, as we had fended off a different (and with an altogether more aggressive approach, I assumed) set of religious followers earlier that night. It sounded nice though, and was an obvious choice for a stop off as the Greyhound route didn’t go anywhere near where we wanted, and it would give us the opportunity to visit Salt Lake City and Reno before hitting Yosemite and San Fran. Imagine an isosceles triangle (I’ll wager that you never thought you’d read that in my blog!) with Las Vegas and Reno as the two points closest to each other, and that would make Salt Lake City the furthest point from the other two – that was the journey we needed to make, which was a little out of the way, but at least we would be able to add Utah on to our list of States Visited.

We rolled in to the station at 6:30am and quickly set up camp on a couple of seats before we could analyse our current situation and plan our next move. The normal POA (Plan Of Action) was for one to stay with the bags in the station whilst the other did a quick scouting mission around the nearest couple of blocks to find either; a) a cafe, b) a generic eatery/drinkery such as McDonalds or Starbucks or c) wi-fi. The latter was always the most important as we could check our booking/check-in times, places to see and things to do, and it was normally located within one of b) anyway (we did not intentionally seek these places in order to eat and drink, merely to order a coffee and boot up the netbook for potentially 6 hours or so whilst we waited to check in). It was my turn to scout this time, so I eagerly set off into town to see what was there. What was not there but which was rather surrounding the town itself were a beautiful set of mountains, outlining the city in a crescent-shape. There was no snow on the mountains as the temperature was already climbing at this time of the morning, but I remembered that Salt Lake City was the setting for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Not that I watched it mind. It is to the real Olympics what women’s football is to men’s. After setting out in completely the wrong direction and heading out of town (it was the mountains fault, the sun was rising, there were shadows, it was amazing!) I realised I was not going to complete my objective unless I did a swift 180^o. There was only a Mexican faux-gangster on his BMX and phone around so I turned on my heel and strode into town.

I managed to find a McDonalds with wi-fi so I headed back to the station to tell James all about it. Apparently he needed to have a walk also, to wake up, so we switched roles and I set about guarding the bags. He came back having found a nearer McDonalds so we lugged our bags down there, ordered a coffee and looked to see what this beautiful city could offer us. When I say “beautiful” I am not including the 40 or 50 bums that I saw in my 45 minute wander in the morning. I don’t know if they were homeless or crack-heads or what, but the majority of them seemed to be waiting for someone or something, possibly to take them to a manual labouring job outside of the city. Our hostel seemed to have a very strange and strict check-in process whereby you could check-in without anyone being there to advise you, but if you arrived before 15:00 you might get charged the price of the night before. So me and James alternated roles of exploring and guarding, this time in the open-plan eating area in the local shopping district that housed all the regulars – McDonalds, Subway, Dog-on-a-Stick, etc. When it finally came to half two we set off to find the Camelot Inn & Hostel and the apparently eccentric owner, as I had been reliably informed in the Visitor Centre.

The fine up-standing Camelot Inn

We had been emailed a code for the front door and as we entered we were greeted by a very excitable and camp gentleman by the name of Arthur, who showed his knowledge of our homeland by shouting “Liverpool! Football!” and doing a kicking motion with his feet. Our keys to the room were to be found in a small security box attached to the frame of the door, and once James had worked out how to open the thing we unlocked the door and entered our room for the night. Another set of bunk-beds. But good-sized ones too, although the room was distinctly lacking anything that you could even come close to calling luxury. No matter, it was only one night. It had been a long night on the Greyhound due to a lot of stop-offs, someone with a VERY loud cough, the guy behind me not letting me put my seat back, and then the guy behind me being accused of “touching and/or sleeping on” the woman next to him whilst she was sleeping. She had not taken kindly to this and had made the accusation when he returned from the restroom to find her sister in his seat (she had offered him $5 to move so her sister could sit next to her, but he refused stating that he needed to sit there so as not to get too claustrophobic, which was probably why I couldn’t have my seat back). I think that she made it up as they had been happily chatting for about an hour, which coincidentally added to the inability to go to sleep. So after all that we needed a quick power nap so that we could get out in the evening. The power nap was interrupted by a young oriental man asking to have our rotary fan. Who was this? Why did he want our fan? Did e work here? He said that we would get it back in a minute or two, so I yanked it from the wall and handed it over. Two minutes later he came back and stated that he had cleaned the fan for us. Magic. That made everything OK. Then, two more minutes had passed when Arthur was knocking at the door to check up on the young lads work. It seemed like he had done a good job so they left us to it and closed the door.

Downtown Salt Lake City

Our evening meal had been set in stone for that night, for I had done my research and found a place that had been featured on Man v Food. It was Crown Burgers, whose signature dish is a quarter-pound burger topped with a mound of paprika-infused pastrami. It was delicious, and certainly beat another round of cereal bars. As we headed back to base (we decided to get back and plan a few moves ahead and then sight-see all day on the Wednesday) we decided it might be nice to grab a cold brewski to “take the edge off” and we found a 7-Eleven next to our hostel. I perused the various cans available to us and steered well clear of the 24oz Steel Reserve can peering at me through the glass. Instead we selected a can that was even bigger than the 24oz monsters we have been getting used to. It was a 32oz (946ml) Miller beer that almost needs two hands to hold the little blighter. And for only $1.99 too! New York prices seemed like a distant memory! I saw 3.2% etched into the top of the can, but after checking the Steel Reserve (which we knew was 8.1%) it had the same etching so assumed that it was something to do with recycling or something. I then realised that my ID was in my Greyhound pass in the hostel room, so gave the can to James to buy me, reminiscent of my trip to Leeds to visit James in his 1^st year at Uni when I was 16. The girl who served us didn’t care, and scanned both cans through for us, and then she said something that would bring us out in a cold sweat. It WAS only 3.2% abv. But...the Steel Reserve in Albuquerque...the hangover...the swirling room...it can’t be only 3.2%! But it was State Law apparently, and only applied to Utah, so outside of this state the abv would vary depending on the brand. That explains it then, I hadn’t got smashed on 4 small cans of 3.2% lager...reputation saved! We sat down to drink our bins of lager and prepped for day two of Salt Lake City...

Oh yes, another Tim vs Food!