Have you ever gotten an idea about a state you’ve never been to before? Like you think about what it’s probably like and that idea is what sticks in your head about that state. We’ve had those ideas challenged quite a bit lately. When I thought of Utah I’d think of Salt Lake of course and probably Zion NP, but our drive from Nevada to Salt Lake really gave us a new perspective on Utah. We drove by rolling hills and a bit of desert, dry lake beds, and through huge, seemingly unending deserts. We’re loving every bit of the discoveries we’re making about all of these states in this incredible country.
Driving into Salt Lake was a bit frustrating though. The highway into the city is so incredibly busy on top of a miserably cold and dreary day. We also had a few chores to run today after getting settled into our hotel room which made the rainy day drag on that much longer.
Have I mentioned yet that we realized our hot water heater wasn’t working on the second day on the road? Fortunately, the water system on the truck still works, we just don’t have a way to get the water hot easily. So we’ve had to make due by either taking cold showers, heating the water pot by pot on the camp stove, taking “bird baths”, or staying in an RV park or hotel about once a week or so to get decent showers. Bird baths consist of heating up a pot of water to wash our faces, brush our teeth, etc. It’s incredible our clean you feel when you can just clean your face and get your hair wet when you haven’t been able to have a full-on shower in a few days.
With our hot water heater being broken, we’ve been trying to track down a new one for a few weeks now. Camping World has the model we wanted and we finally talked with the Camping World in Salt Lake City and they confirmed that they had one in stock that we could pick up. So we loaded back into the truck and set off back down the highway to finally get a new hot water heater.
And…
They didn’t have one. Like not a single one. Not even a different brand. We drove 35 mins back down the highway after confirming with this store that they had this water heater only to get there and them tell us that they had made a mistake. Such is life, right? Yep.
So far our experience in Salt Lake hadn’t been too great. We’d been in really busy traffic, the weather was just bad, the hotel we were originally going to stay in was not remotely similar to the website and felt really unsafe, and now we’ve wasted time coming all the way back out to the far side of the city for nothing at all. At this point we decided to hole up in our room for the rest of the evening and just relax with a nice dinner.
The next morning, we took a nice walk with the dogs to a great little bakery downtown and started to feel a bit better about Salt Lake. The morning was beautiful and we had the whole day to spend here. A little while before lunch I got a phone call from my parents letting us know what they were not too terribly far from Salt Lake and wanted to stop in and meet us for lunch. They’ve been camping around the country themselves for about two weeks now and their route just happened to overlap with ours.
When they made it into the city we walked downtown to the Hall Pass Food Court where we were able to enjoy lunch outside and sit and chat the afternoon away. We were finally beginning to enjoy this city. At some point in the afternoon Will and my dad got to talking and planned the next week or so for us to all travel and camp together. Will had helped my dad install solar panels on their R-Pod camper earlier in the spring and my parents hadn’t had a chance to do any dispersed camping so it was decided that we would all do that together within the next week.
With a new plan set in place, we relaxed a bit more that afternoon, walked to see the Mormon Temple, and ended the evening with dinner at Shabu Shabu. We’ve never heard of this before but we had a blast with our shabu. Essentially shabu is an Asian hot pot dish. At Mr. Shabu in Salt Lake City each person has an individual hot pot at their seat. You choose the broth of your dish that you keep simmering in your pot, choose the meats you’d like to add, and then choose the veggies and sauces you’d like to add to it. Everything is unlimited and is brought to the table for you to cook to your liking in your broth. I suppose it’s essentially like The Melting Pot, but with Asian ingredients. Bonus – there’s a Shabu spot in Charlotte… https://www.boilingpotnc.com/index.php/how-to-asian-fondue/
You should check it out if you’re in town, it’s a really fun experience!
All in all, Salt Lake City was pretty not bad. We were a bit frustrated the first day, but finally got a chance to walk around downtown and found that there was quite a lot to enjoy. We’re headed out in the morning towards Idaho. Our original plans didn’t include Idaho at all, but we’ve since changed things around and are planning on spending the next week camping up the state.
Still riding at 55. Give us a wave when you inevitably pass us.
Rachel
DMG Exploration 