Day 78 - Provo, Utah to Wendover, Nevada

The Happy Wanderers are definitely back in the West. The mountains are higher. The deserts are drier. The skies are bluer. And the sun looks brighter across all of it. Yup, we must be getting close to home.

This morning, before we left the Salt Lake City area and headed west, we made time to visit a very special place called "This Is The Place Heritage Park." According to Wikipedia, "the location of the park is where, on July 24, 1847, Brigham Young first saw the Salt Lake Valley that would soon become the Mormon pioneers' new home."

"Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that Young had a vision shortly after they were exiled from Nauvoo, Illinois. In the vision, he saw the place where the Latter-day Saints would settle and 'make the desert blossom like a rose' and where they would build their State of Deseret."

As the account goes, Brigham Young was very sick with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and was riding in the back of a wagon. After exiting Emigration Canyon and cresting a small hill, he asked to look out of the wagon. Those with him opened the canvas cover and propped him up so he could see the empty desert valley below. He then proclaimed, "It is enough. This is the right place. Drive on." The words, "this is the place," were soon heard throughout the wagon train as the Mormon pioneers descended into the valley, their long journey having come to an end. The statement was first attributed to Young by Wilford Woodruff more than thirty years after the pioneer advent."

"Over the next several years, tens of thousands of Mormon pioneers emerged from Emigration Canyon and first saw their new home from this same location. A Utah state holiday, Pioneer Day, occurs each year on July 24 to commemorate the Mormon pioneers' entry into the valley."

Fortunately, you don't have to be a Mormon to visit their Heritage Park. I had been to the park once before, many years ago, and found it fascinating. I knew that Concetta would just love to wander the rustic streets of the large village they have created out of homes and businesses that were important to the settlement of the Salt Lake Valley, and elsewhere in Mormon country. Many of these historic structures had volunteer docents on hand to explain the significance of the home or business. The buildings most often came complete with period furnishings.

Part of the reason that Heritage Village is important to me, beyond my love of history and special fascination for these outdoor Chautauqua-style recreations of historic settings, is that John Buchanan, the brother of my great great grandmother, was a wagon master for two of the later Mormon trips, and might also have tagged along on the very first wagon train in 1847 as I found his name on the brass plaque today for that early trip. I also discovered while doing a bit of research, that John Buchanan was one of the 500 volunteers sent by the Mormon church to help fight in the Mexican War of 1846, in the so called, Mormon Battalion. Wow! There's just nothing as exciting as tracing your family tree back to some really exciting historic figures.

Today was a lovely day to take photos. The sun was shining like it meant to stay that way, and only infrequently did I have to wait awhile as a fluffy cloud or two drifted by and briefly put the village in shadow. And I had lots of potential subjects in addition to the historic buildings. As with nearly every other historic place we have visited during the last ten weeks, Heritage Village came complete with about ten school bus-loads of youngsters. But since this was an open-air experience, their yells of enthusiasm didn't distract from our experience at all. In fact, on a couple of occasions, I sought to use the kids as subjects. They were learning how to wash clothes on a old-fashioned wash board, beat rugs with a traditional beating tool, and till the soil for the vegetable garden. The trouble with the tilling part, they were stirring up so much dust I finally had to give it up and move on.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the morning was when we happened upon a young girl doing the vegetable gardening in her long gingham dress and white apron. I asked her if she was having any trouble kneeling in the dirt and similar activities dressed in such an outfit. In character, she cocked her head, sounded astonished, and asked, "What should I be wearing? Certainly not men's clothes." What fun!

Concetta spent quite a bit of time chatting with the "farm" girl and learning about gardening techniques in the 19th century. We also learned about barbering, leather working, weaving, and candy selling as we wandered from building to building. Since the tourist season has not yet begun, some of the buildings were not staffed. Notably, the print shop was not open. Since I spent a decade of my life working in a print shop, I was very sorry to miss that bit of interaction. We visited the wood shop and the shoe shop, which were fascinating even though no docent was on hand to further our education. But there were sufficient "self help" signs in those places to explain much of the work done there.

During the course of this vacation we have begun to suspect that our GPS has slowly been losing her mind. I say "her," because the voice that talks to us is decidedly female. Anyway, as the weeks have progress the device has begun to have ever greater problems "finding the satellite," as she puts it. Well today, as we sought to leave Heritage Park and head for Interstate 80 as we continued our trek westward, the GPS lady finally had had enough of doing her job. It was like those old Startrek stories where Kirk decides to give the computer a task beyond its capability, then watches as it self destructs.

Concetta had fed the coordinates for this evening's Wendover, Nevada, KOA stop into the computer's memory bank. But as we rolled out onto the city streets from Heritage Park and waited for her to tell us whether to turn or go straight, she lost her mind and started repeating the steps we had programmed to get to the Park in first place. Then she switched to demanding that we turn onto streets we had passed several minutes before. Over and over again she repeated the same half dozen steps to some mythical destination.

Finally, I had Concetta turn the device off and I navigated by instinct. I knew Heritage Park was in the northeast corner of the city of Salt Lake. Heading due west had to eventually bring us to either Interstate 15 going north and south, or Interstate 80 going west. And that's what happened. We did have to take a turn around the block because when we spotted the sign for Interstate 80 it said turn left NOW! Unfortunately, we were in the far right lane when that happened. So we just rounded the block, got in the appropriate lane, and the rest was a piece of cake.

It's been quite a long time since we had been across the desert between Salt Lake and Wendover and I was intrigued to see that there was far more water present than I remembered as being normal. There was even water built up between the railroad grade and the highway. Evidently, Utah has been getting more rain than Nevada.

Naturally, we had to stop at the Bonneville Salt Flats and take a photo. Once again I noticed that the salt was very wet, if not submerged close to the highway. The vista was so bright white that it caused my camera to under expose my shots, which I should have anticipated. Still, I think you'll get the idea from the shot at upper right.

When we got to Wendover we rolled slowly through town looking for the KOA, but failed to find it. Oh, well, we decided, we'd just go do some grocery shopping and gassing up of the RV. While filling the tank, I asked the guy fueling next to me if he happened to know where our KOA RV park was located.

"Sure," he said. "Just go down the street to the Red Garter casino. There's an alley that runs just to the east of their parking lot. Go down that alley and you'll be right there."

Of course, once we had finished shopping, and were headed back towards the center of town, there was a sign where the guy at the gas station said to turn. Evidently, no sign was thought to be necessary when you're headed west instead of east. Ah, the trials of RVing! Here's our spartan Wendover camp on the left. Nevada sometimes doesn't offer much in the way of vegetation.