Our 2009 visit to Utah was limited to changing planes in Salt Lake City Airport continuing on to Seattle, Washington and a pre-Christmas visit to see the grandkids .
The first picture is obviously taken over the Great Salt Lake. Rather than the typical lake it is more of a bog with too much salt for the bog plants to grow. We were flying over light haze and I noticed the shadow of the contrail as the brown streak across the picture. I'm not sure if the hills covered with the aspens in the fall is still in Utah but as I'll explain later this is the base picture I used in a mosaic for my dad's nintyth birthday in 2010.
After our stay in Albuquerque, New Mexico we crossed the southeastern corner of Colorado to visit the Mesa Verde National Park before passing through the Utah Canyonlands on our way through Salt Lake City and eastern Idaho. And yes we did skip the Four Corners tourist trap on this trip. Like I've said before If you gotta go we go the other way.
Southeastern Utah approaching the Canyonlands remains much the same as the rest of the four corners area. There is just enough water to support grasslands with the ocasional buttes that are all that remains from millennia of erosion. As we left the Canyonlands heading up Route 6 toward Salt Lake City I stopped to take this photograph of the beautiful snowy mountains not realizing that the local ghost town of Thistle was the site of one to the most costly landslides in US history and resulted in the dubious distinction of being the cause of Utah's first Presidential Disaster Declaration.
In the Salt Lake City area we stayed in American Fork about 30 miles south of the city and explored a lot of the outlying attractions I've put on separate pages like the Red Butte Garden, the Bingham Canyon Mine, and Timpanogos Cave so I'll just add our waterfall expeditions like this visit to Battle Creek Falls here.
This rather long steep scrambling hike for a couple of old guys was somewhat marred by the young kids you can see at the bottom of the falls trying to impress their girlfriends by free climbing the wall along the falls. Yes, I've taken wilderness first aid and I'm experienced with that rescue nonsense but I think I'll just pass and get out of the area thank you very much I'm on vacation.
The view of Utah Lake from the top of the falls is rather nice and there are a lot of these little mini falls along the trail to the main falls.
The other waterfall we stopped to photograph was Bridal Veil Falls which is more impressive after heavier rains. Apparently in the 1960s they built a tramway to a restaurant at the top which was closed by an avalanche in the mid 1990s and never reopened. As I recall when we visited even the parking area was closed and we could only view it from the road.
On our trip from Ohio to Washington in 2006 we made a few short dips into Utah. Due to the gas drilling in Wyoming ALL the motels were filled and we ended up staying in the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. While most of the gorge is in Wyoming the dam on the southern end is in Utah. In the infinite wisdom of our wonderful Homeland Security Department tours of the dam were no longer available. Another excellent example of giving up freedom for security results in neither security nor freedom.
The picture of the gorge here looking north to Wyoming dramatically shows the result of many years of drought in the area. This overlook is not much higher than the dam located off to the right.
After Flaming Gorge we stayed at the Idaho's Bear Lake SP on the Idaho half of the lake. If we pass through here again Utah's Bear Lake SP has much better facilities
Our second dip was using a southern loop from Bear Lake just to avoid more travels in the interstate ditch. The views off the interstate are so much better like this overview of Logan, Utah.