Today did not go as we had intended. In my grand scheme, we would take some time after breakfast to go explore Sun Valley which was 20 minutes north of where we were staying. We were hoping to maybe get a short hike in the Sawtooth National Forest. But fate had other plans for us. Apparently, the haze we noticed on the drive yesterday was not from the heat or low cloud cover. It was smoke from massive wild fires just south of us were causing all the smoke. In fact, they were discouraging people from driving on the road that we were going to take to Salt Lake City.
So all those plans changed. I did a quick run in the morning – smoke didn’t seem to be an issue for me – and then got ready to hit the road right after breakfast. We changed our route to try to avoid the worst of the smoke and fire and put the top up on the convertible. We skipped our trip to Sun Valley since our new route was going to take longer than the original one and we understood that the valley was getting ready to possibly lose power for a few days as a result of the fire.
And then we drove. And kept driving. Nearly 300 miles without stopping. We could both see and smell the smoke as it hung over the vast boring beigeness of the landscape. It was a very unfun drive. One interesting thing was the hundreds of cyclists we passed on the road despite the smoke. For more than 45 miles we passed a line of cyclists all riding along the edge of the road as part of some event that we never did figure out.
After four hours on the road, we got to Ogden, Utah where we stopped for lunch and to stretch our legs. I think it’s probably a very cool town but even the coolest town in Utah on a Sunday is boring. After lunch, we tried to get a hike in to Waterfall Canyon, partway up Mt. Ogden. I had read some cool stuff about it and every write up called it “a great little hike” which didn’t manage my expectations appropriately at all. We climbed more than 600 feet in just over a mile and got to a point where climbing over boulders was the necessary next step. And we decided not to bother. I don’t know how much farther we would have had to go to get to the falls but we were not appropriately equipped for anything longer than we had already done so back down we went. Here’s what the falls supposedly look like. Maybe another time.
We bundled back into the air conditioned car and headed to Salt Lake City. We arrived at our downtown B&B right as the Tour of Utah bike event was rapping up two blocks away at the state capital. I don’t think these were the same cyclists as we saw in Idaho though….
After a lovely dinner downtown at an Italian restaurant, it was time to get a last bit of exercise in so back uphill to the capital we went to watch the sunset.
Numbers for today:
- Miles driven: 318
- Average gas mileage: 26 mpg
- Number of steps: 15, 234
- Number of floors: 70 (!)
- Layers of sunscreen: 0.5 (top was up all day)
- French lessons: 0.5 (finished from yesterday.
The Cannon Family's travel blog 
