Excuse me, why are you here?

The drive to Salt Lake City took us about 5 hours. Again, it was one of those semi-enforced stops as our next destination (Bryce National Park), was over 10 hours drive from Yellowstone and we didn't fancy doing it in a "one-r".

The drive was through Utah where there are 3 things to do.

1 - Drive to Salt Lake City
2 - Fill up with petrol
3 - Drive out of Salt Lake City.

We drove for miles and miles without seeing anything apart from cows, grain fields and tarmac.

For those of you who don't know, SLC is the home of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons as they are better know. Mormons don't smoke, drink alcohol or tea / coffee. This worried us slightly. It was also where the 2002 Winter Olympics took place as there is some of the best skiing in the States available here.

Anyway, we had booked ourselves into the park for 1 night, which happened to be a Saturday night, so we did hope that there would be some sort of nightlife about. We showered and jumped on the local bus that took us into downtown SLC.

The place seemed to be very quiet, with only a few restaurants about, but all looked busy. After a bit of a wander we decided to ask someone where to go, so we went into the theatre and asked the chaps there. Now when we speak to the locals in most of the places we have visited, we get asked where we are from and what we are doing there. This was slightly different. We did get asked where we were from but then asked WHY we were in SLC. This made us feel very unwelcome. What they actually meant is why on earth would 2 English people bother to come here as there is nothing to do! After a bit of a giggle with them they pointed us in the direction of a few places and we discovered a PF Changs, a chain of Chinese / American restaurants. As we entered the place and the hostess asked us where we wanted to sit, we were asked again what the hell we were doing in SLC. And again by our waitress! Very bizarre!

The meal was excellent and we struck up a bit of a rapport with our waitress who gave us some ideas about where to go for a drink (thank god) and as she was from San Diego, some pointers while we where there too.

We headed towards a bar which was fairly busy, had a few gins and called it a night.

The next day we were heading to Bryce, we decided to see a little bit more of the place, including a free tour round Temple Square, which was built in 2000.

Most of you who know me know I'm not a religious person at all, but I do know a little bit about the Old Testament. Our tour guide, Susan, took us round pointing out the interesting bits of the Square while I was asking her what the difference is between the Mormons and the other religions that believe in God, because I could not see any difference at all. There were parts with Jesus, Moses, Noah, Jerusalem, Adam and Eve - all stuff that you learn about at school. Susan informed me that their Prophet, Joseph Smith, was visited by God in 1863 and that seems to be it.

Upon closer inspection and a few more questions, it seems that the Latter Day Saints religion was set up to swindle money out of their members to fund the lavish lifestyles of their head Prophet and the 12 Apostles. This place oooooozed cash. There was an auditorium that sat over 21,000 people with a fully installed sound system and HD cameras dotted all over the place. This is to broadcast their meetings and conferences to over 80 million members around the world, who are no doubt sat there hanging on every word with their bank details to hand.



As we continued the tour, which was quite good may I add, we saw a huge painting of the head Prophet and 12 Apostles in a massive room - a sort of MD and his Board if you like. We then ended up on the roof of this building, with a view of SLC.



I asked Susan how much this cost to build and she did not have an answer for me, so I assume $millions.

Our final stop was the visitors centre, where "The Universe" was. In the centre was a huge statue of Jesus.



I guess you could argue that all religions are like this in one way or another and I feel as if I'm being a tad harsh here, but the impression I got was one of extortion!

We wandered around a bit more, found a shopping centre which was the busiest place we'd seen all day, and headed back to the RV.

One of my fav thigs I saw here was a sweatshirt with the initials of Salt Lake and the abbreviated Utah state name - SL,UT. Genius.

Stuoobs

xxx