Salty Sunday

On Easter Sunday Lisa Shafer and I headed out to the Great Salt Lake to enjoy the nice, warm weather.

The water is so low that it took us about 15 minutes to walk out to the water from the parking area at Saltair.  As always, there were quite a few seagulls, feasting on the brine shrimp in the lake.

Tumbleweeds, posts from an abandoned pier, seagulls and mountains in the background.

Over by Stansbury Island we found this mountain of salt.

And this isn’t a snow scape – it’s a twig poking out of dried salt.

I’m thinking this is the leftover minerals that they separate from the salt before sending it to your dinner table.

Me, standing out in a field of salt.  It looked like a big pond of water with a sheet of salt on top.  I walked out to see how thick the layer of salt was, to see if it was thick enough to walk on.  The salt wasn’t all that thick, but I could walk on it because it was just a sheet of salt on the sand, no water under it.

Salt wrinkles.

I really wanted to drive the Jeep out onto the sheet, but knew that it would be a stupid idea.  This is as close as I dared get to the salt, and even then I spent $10 spraying down the underside when I got home.

And a big chunk of salt I found on the side of the road.

Evolution of a cloud.

I went out to the Great Salt Lake to capture tonight’s sunset.  It wasn’t as spectacular as I had hoped, but there was one cloud that fascinated me.

Mmmm, smell that air.

The Salt Lake Valley is notorious for it’s winter inversions that trap all kinds of human-caused particulates in the air.

But this evening we experienced another type of air pollution, which cannot be blamed on the human race whatsoever.

Imagine the smell of the ocean, only stronger (the Great Salt Lake is anywhere from 2 to 8 times as salty as the ocean).  Add to that the smell of stagnancy and millions of drowned brine flies.

For some reason it’s not so bad when you’re out at the lake itself, but when the weather comes from the northwest, right over the lake, and blows that smell into the city, it comes across pretty strong.  And not so sweet either.

But the front has passed, the winds calmed down and the smell is clearing.  Lasted a whole half hour.

The Great Salt Lake

This is not a lake for swimming in. 

It’s too shallow:  At it’s deepest, the lake is 33’ (10m) deep, with an average of 14’ (4m).  Considering how big it is (28 by 75 miles, 45 by 121 km), it’s a long walk before I would be unable to stand up in it.

It’s too salty: The salinity ranges from 10% to almost 30%, depending on where you are on the lake and the current lake level. (Oceans average 3.5%).   Once you do get out far enough to swim, you have to fight to stay under water.

But it is great for diaper rash.  Before I was born, my parents drove through Salt Lake on their way to Berkeley, Ca.  They stopped off at the Great Salt Lake to go swimming, with their 1 year old baby.  Unaware of exactly how salty the water would be, they put my brother into the water and he immediately started screaming bloody murder.   When they got up the next morning, his diaper rash was completely gone.

I do like going out the Great Salt Lake.  It’s a nice, quiet place, wonderful for just sitting, thinking and relaxing.  The smell of the lake reminds me of the smell of the Atlantic Ocean, where I grew up.  The smell is a lot stronger, the water a lot calmer, but it’s still a good place to go when I miss the Atlantic.

Chasin’ Brineflies

If you’ve seen my “Abstract” pictures, you probably figured that I went out to Antelope Island sometime recently.  Today as a matter of fact, my writer friend Lisa Shafer and I headed out there for relaxation and some photo shooting.

Antelope Island is on the Great Salt Lake, which means that the beaches are swarming with brine flies.  At one point Lisa walked down the beach, sending a wave of brine flies in front of her.  I did a continuous shoot of photos as she went and put it together in this time-lapse video.  It’s only 19 seconds long, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the buffalo burger I had at the café on the beach there.

Huge hole in the earth and quirky little park in Salt Lake City

Tuesday was the last day my visitor would be in town.  We went out to see the Great Salt Lake, then to the Bingham Copper Mine, to Gilgal Gardens and finally to The Museum of Natural History up at the University of Utah. 

It's been a long time since I've been out to see the big pit, at least 10 years.  A lot has changed since then.  They moved the visitor's center, since the hole is a lot larger.  The most noticable thing, at least at first, is the increase in security.  From zero to the President sleeps here.  Last time I was there you just drove up to the visitor's center, walked out to the rim and took pictures.  Now you have to check in with Security at the front gate.  They give you a pass to hang on your rearview mirror, jot down the # of people in your car on a number coded stub from the hanger and charge you $5 a car.  A sign tells you that you are only permitted to take pictures at the visitor's center, and all the way up you are reminded not to stop and not to take pictures.  And there's a security dude in his truck at the center to make sure you follow all rules.  Jeese, it's just a hole!

One of those bigass tires that go on one of those bigass trucks that haul the dirt and ore out of the pit.

My pciture of their picture of the pit from the air.

Gilgal Gardens is a small little place in the heart of Salt Lake City.  Originally it was the back yard of a private residence, but when the house went up for sale, to prevent the destruction of this little oddity, Salt Lake City purchased the property.  Thomas Child started working on it in 1945 and worked on it until his death in 1963.  It's full of rock carvings like this statue of the sphinx with the face of Joseph Smith.  Rocks with engravings of scriptures form pathways and walls all over the place.  There is a statue of himself and one of his wife.

Below is a rock carving of a Mormon Cricket.

In the center is a sculpture of Thomas Child, surrounded by what looks like tools he used for farming and the carvings themselves.  One of the groundskeepers, an lady in what I would guess is her 70's, told us that he did all the carvings and engravings himself - except for the faces.  He didn't do faces so he had a friend of his carve all the faces for him.

A little set up of stones with scriptures, both standing up and on the walking stones.  I told the lady that I used to come here with my friends back when I was in high school and that I remembered it being a lot more overgrown, and that they had obviously cleaned it up since the city took over.  I also asked if anything had been moved around during the cleaning up or if everything was still in it's original place.  She told me that nothing had been moved, everything was in the place that Thomas had put it.  She also said to me, in response to my telling her that my friends and I visited there back in high school, "So, you and your little friends were some of the ones that used to sneak in and smoke marijuana in the corner there?"  Uh, no, not me!  She just smiled, chuckled and went on telling us about the history of the place.

Some sort of garden of stone body parts. If you click on the link below you can see them close up.

To see the rest of the pictures from that day go here: Bingam Copper Pit & Gilgal Gardens

Iosepa to near-death experience.

Ok, so one of the nice things about the wet weather is this rainbow over my garage.

I decided to get out of the house today, 3 days of going nowhere other than the Home Depot gets a little old.  So, I gassed up the BattleCruiser and headed out west.  First thought was Stansbury Island.  Been there, done that, wanted something different.  So drove past it, all the way to Delle (one gas station and closed motel).  Nothing there to see so I headed back towards SLC and when I came upon the Dugway* exit decided to see what was up that road.  The first town on the sign was Iosepa, so I decided that was where I'd go and then head on back.

There I am on the old I-80 headed out towards the Great Salt Lake.  It runs parallel to the new I-80, but is a hell of a lot more fun to drive in these big old cars.  Makes me feel like I'm in an episode of "Route 66"

The back side of the Iosepa sign.  Very, very Native American, which begs to ask......

Why "Aloha"?  Whatever, Iosepa was was even smaller than Delle.  Clump of trees, house and a barn.

The picture says it all.  that's the fire station on the right hand side.

Ok, so I did get a little dirt-roadin' in on this trip.  Went to what is called "Lone Rock", because it's, well, a lone rock out in the middle of the valley. 

Utah, famous for a whole lot of nuttin'.  This is what surrounds Lone Rock.

BattleCruiser on the hill in front of Lone Rock.  It looks a lot steeper when you're in the driver seat trying to get the thing down the hill.

Lone Rock, all alone.

And, of course, there were mud puddles left over from the recent rains, and I had to have a little bit of fun with them.  Car got a bit dirty, but it's not like it's the first time I've run a '72 Country Squire through huge mud puddles, right Gearheads?

And finally - the near death experience. 

Q - You're driving along a section of the freeway that is under construction.  You get to an exit that is closed, without any previous warning.  You:

.......... a) continue on your way to the next exit.

.......... b) ram the barriers and exit anyways, or

......... c) come to a complete stop in the middle of the freeway while you figure out what to do.

A - if you are a taxi cab in Salt Lake City, you choose "c".  Which means the car behind you has to side swipe the barriers to keep from being slammed into from the back end by a huge '72 Ford wagon, and said wagon, as the driver's (me) bladder is letting go**, swerves half way into the middle lane, praying no one is there, to avoid slamming either of the previously mentioned vehicles into next week.  Thank God, no one was there and an accident (vehicular, that is) was avoided. 

*as in the Dugway proving grounds, where they test bombs and the latest bombers.  Not as exciting as Area 51, but a laugh nonetheless.

** of course the wagon is the only LTD I have with cloth seats.  It couldn't have been the convertible, which has naugahyde seats - they're impervious to everything, even baby vomit.