[Christina] Day 4: Adventures on the Utah Prairie

 Back to the restaurant where we ate lunch.  We asked the waitstaff how to get to the Great Salt Lake.

They were very friendly and helpful, and recommended we go to Spiral Jetty. [Apparently our waiter had recently taken his engagement photos here.]  Spiral Jetty was only accessible by a gravel road, but one of the waiters assured us that we could do it because he'd made the trip with a sofa in his hatchback.  He also drew us the mappiest map ever. 

Note how north-south I-15 runs right-left.  Also note that all annotations were added by Elizabeth.

Luckily for us, Google saved the day and provided us with some actual directions.  We set out after lunch. 

On the way to Spiral Jetty, we came across Golden Spike National Historic Site.  We didn't know what it was, but since it was on the way, we were definitely going to stop there.  Elizabeth thought that it was a monument to stratigraphy, and that the golden spike referred to the golden spikes geologists place at the type site for stratigraphic boundaries.  We had a rousing discussion about the goals, benefits, and limitations of stratigraphers and their approach to geology.

When we got there, it turned out that Golden Spike was...railroads.

It turns out that this was the place where the transcontinental railroad was completed, with the last spike being made of 18-karat gold. [Elizabeth sidebar: the actual golden spike is in a museum at Stanford University, because why not].  The museum was a real gem.

"Used to treat infections incurred while fraternizing with women of the evening."

The caption how many people were killed by such devices in one particular year, and states "You be careful, too."

The railroad was a massive engineering effort but the completion of it was a comedy of errors.  Two railroad companies started at opposite coasts and planned to meet in the middle.  When they got to the middle, they ended up missing each other.

Once that problem was sorted out and the railroad was one spike away from completion, the heads of the railroad companies were given the chance to drive in this final railroad spike. [This was a huge to-do, with people traveling in for weeks from all around the west.] They both swung and missed.  The actual people who did the actual work on the railroad had to come along and finish the job.

We then set out for Spiral Jetty.  We drove a very long way along a very washboardy gravel road with NO TRESSPASSING PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT!!! signs on either side, but luckily the directions the webpage provided were very good - 4 cattle-guards, several dirt road forks, and a number of little inconspicuous white signs saying "spiral jetty" with arrows later, we found it.

When we got there, though, it was entirely worth the trip.  How gorgeous!  Yay basalt! [Elizabeth sidebar: in addition to the beautiful jetty, which was completely dry when we got there, we saw a bunch of evaporite depoits, some with highly concentrated salty water from the Great Salt Lake. We didn't actually make it to the lake edge proper, it was probably another mile away, since the water line was relatively low, but it was really gorgeous, and I still got to stick my finger in Great Salt Lake water, which was awesome.]

The day's adventures were not yet over, however.  We left Spiral Jetty and headed back up to I-84 by a different route.  There, we discovered a missile testing facility with an exhibit out front. [Elizabeth sidebar: I wonder what crazy things happen at this national lab - we are sure that the missile exhibit is there to distract any tourists who happen to get this far - seriously, it's *way* off the beaten path.]

In short, we found a space shuttle solid rocket booster in the middle of the Utah prarie on UT-83. [Elizabeth sidebar: apparently this place is popular enough that it needs a sign to tell the unsuspecting tourists to *not* crawl into the base of the giant rocket booster... I didn't, but I did get a great handstand picture.]

After that, we had an uneventful drive up to Idaho where we stopped for the night at a hotel in Burley, ID.  Hooray for showers!  Hooray for wifi! Hooray for $2 laundry!