It’s been a week since we left SLC for the Northwest, so I’d better write down our memories from the city.
Getting into SLC late at night was a little hectic. We drove through some pertty hairy construction areas. I was really tired from driving and working my weird east coast time schedule so Laurel did the last few hours of driving. We got to the Pony Express RV Park on the north side of the city aroun 11:30 at night, I had to get up for work at 6am. So there was no time to celebrate getting to a new city.
Working from the park was fine, the internet again was Tengo provided. Thus is was passable for working. The park was just north of town, in what I’ll call “The Wastelands”. The Wastelands most prominent feature is the generous amount of refineries that make the air periodically smell like stale farts. But they do provide a great view of the mountains that surround the city, and there is technically a view of the Capitol and the Temple. The drive to SLC proper takes about 15 minutes, but if you make one wrong turn it can take 30 minutes.
The street names in SLC take a little getting used to, the address can be something like 300 W 300 st. Which would be confusing enough, but they don’t always call then that. They have names also! Which would be like any other town, except they choose which name or number to show on the sign based on some archaic set of rules based on the phases of the moon or something.
Speaking of archaic rules! The Beer laws in SLC take some deciphering. I had heard that beer could only be 4% alcohol in Utah. But that isn’t always true, if the place you’re at has a ‘restaurant’ license they can sell you whatever type of booze your little hearts desire. But you have to order a meal with it. This is not acceptable for my beer tastings. But the giant loophole is that beer in a bottle can be any percentage, thus negating all other silly rules. End Rant.
Laurel went out to see the Great Salt Lake on Monday with her friend while I worked. I probably should have gone too, since I didn’t end up getting to see it the rest of the trip. She described it as a weird place with not a lot of vegetation and billions of brine shrimp swimming about. But she did take some fun pictures.
On Monday night we went out and tried some brew pubs in the city, but all the beers ended up tasting pretty generic. Now I attribute this to the 4% SLC draft beer law. But at the time I was a little disappointed. Uinta and Epic are still good breweries, I wont hold this against them. Just avoid all draft beers in Utah, it’s the only way to be sure. Once you figure that out you can find some great beers. I recommend the Beer Hive and The Tavernacle.
The reason we were in town was for the Doterra International Conference. Laurel has been with Doterra for about 4 years now, it’s one of the things that enabled us to take this trip. As a ‘outsider’ the conference was interesting. I thought it would be all about boring new products, but it was really informative and I came away really impressed with the company. Their mission isn’t just to sell oils and make money, they’re interested in helping people. This experience has really inspired me to help Laurel more with her business.
Overall I would say that we liked Salt Lake, the people are very outdoor oriented. They seemed to enjoy good food and (some of them) drinks. Its located very close to a lot of great mountains. It was the first stop in a long time that we stayed in one place and had a bit of a normal schedule every day. Because of the conference I took 2 days off from work, so it kind of felt like a little vacation. The city is very clean, but there are a lot of homeless people panhandling for money. You can tell that the city is dominated by the Mormon Church, they have buildings everywhere. But I met a good amount of non-mormons at the various bars and hipster hair cutting establishments that I visited. It doesn’t take much to stand out there, the whole culture reminded me of being the ‘weird’ kid in church youth group growing up.
It’s not somewhere I can see us living, but it’s not all that bad.
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