Salt Lake City

If you are planning to go to Salt Lake City be prepared to pay a premium for your stay. Normally we try to find a good compromise between the low cost camp sites and the really pricey nice camp sites. In Salt Lake City there was very little choice and none of them were inexpensive to a family with a travel trailer. If we were tent camping again, we would have had several options for staying low cost. In our trailer though it was high dollar or hours away. Originally we were thinking of staying right on the great salt lake, but then we figured out that the peninsula had a toll and we would have to pay it each way! So we looked at all the resorts in town and decided on one north of the capital that was slightly less expensive. After driving all day we were informed it was $65 a night to stay at the place we had chosen. I was on the verge of going somewhere else, but we had already looked into the situation and knew that there was no where else decent to go. While we debated taking one of the last spots, people and lined up behind us with their motorhomes and travel trailers! We decided to bite the bullet and just pay for the space, but only for two nights instead of three. The shift changed and Sarah was able to get us in for only $45 a night with the new worker. I guess we got lucky too because by the time we pulled into the camp, there was five people behind us trying to find a site.

We quickly have figured out that resort camping is not our cup of tea. The sites are easy to pull into, have full hookups included cable (which we never use), and there is usually a pool and rec room. We prefer to hang out in nature and a parking lot with a tiny stripe of grass isn’t quite the same. Like we normal we make do though and just try to make the best of it. While walking on a bike trail next to the resort, we were informed by other guests that there was a beaver in the river. After sitting next to the river for twenty minutes we finally were able to observe the beaver having its dinner. Since the photos were not great quality and we were unable to zoom in far enough, we decided to purchase a better camera in the near future. It was amazing getting to see the beaver though and we will always have our memory of it. Usually we are staying at a resort to have quick access to the capital or a large city, so it all works out in the end.

The capital at Salt Lake City is a large building that is gorgeous, but hard to get to. Outside has impressive lion statues and a large fountain with statues scattered all around. Inside it has beautiful paintings of the westward expansion by colonists and a theme of honey bee hives which we thought was really cool. Since it was a state holiday when we went to the capital we didn’t have a tour guide, so Sarah stepped up and used the self guided tour pamphlet to give us a tour. I think her next job should be tour guide somewhere because she was a natural at it and did a thorough job of teaching us some things while we wandered around. The second floor of the capital building had art and statues including one of Philo Farnsworth the inventor of television. I personally enjoyed the hand carved bison, but there were so many neat statues and pieces of art it felt like we were visiting an art gallery or museum.

Our next stop was Salt Lake City’s Natural History Museum. I have been to a bunch of museums over the years, but this place had more dinosaurs then every other museum I had been put together! The full size long neck was so large that it was impossible to get a picture of the whole thing. There were other floors too with a variety of displays from biology, geology, native culture, genetics and more! We had a blast looking everywhere and would recommend anyone visiting Salt Lake City to take a day to visit this educational site.