Blog Bat Around: How I Spent My Summer Vacation

A couple of months ago, Matt suggested the Blog Bat Around idea of providing a virtual vacation of our respective corners of the country through our blogs. I thought it was a great idea, but I never acted on it. Until now. I was waiting for an opportune time, and now that we are back in school and doing all of our normal "Back-to-School" things, I wanted to provide my virtual tour of Utah in the traditional "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" essay mold.

My photo essay of my travels covers more than my little area. I'm including many of the sights I saw this summer from our various trips, but at no time did I leave the state. As the only card blogger from Utah (I think), I feel comfortable claiming the entire state as my area, though Utah does contain three very distinct geographic regions within its borders. With any luck, that will just make this all the more interesting.

Let's start close to home and move outward.

This is the view from my front yard.

And from the back window. From the front you see a cornfield; in the back is alfalfa.

And everywhere else in our part of town is orchards. Cherries and apples. None of the farms are ours, though; they just surround us.

This scene was filmed about 2 miles from my house:

 

 

We live just on the edge of the city limits, though. The town looks more like this:

 

 

Main Street, Payson.

 

My daily drive to work takes me past a local landmark.

 

Photo Credit: heraldextra.com

BYU's Y Mountain. I know a lot of places paint their water towers for the local school. Well, in these parts we don't have water towers. So we paint the mountains. On my drive to work, I pass the "P" for Payson High, the "G" for Pleasant Grove High, and the largest of all, the "Y." I don't know how many other places do it, but it's definitely common practice in Utah.

Matt asked us to share local cuisine. Well, I think you all understand Mexican food. Seriously, excluding fast food and pizza joints, about 85% of the restaurants--and two of the three food trucks--are Mexican places. That may not be the best indicator, though, since my town is so small. By driving just a few miles, you can probably find just about any kind of food you want. I don't know of any typical "Utah" cuisine. Google will tell you that the most popular dish in Utah is Jell-o, but that is a flat-out lie. That's just some weird stereotype that somehow lives on.

There is this, though. I've talked to people from out-of-state, and I've learned that this type of establishment is a uniquely Utah one. It's a soda shop where you can get your Dr. Pepper or Coke or whatever "dirty": with syrups or other add-ins. There are dozens of these in my county, and most places have multiple options in town. My theory is that since members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints don't drink coffee, they simply pick something else to drink constantly. I'm not a fan of these places because I don't drink a lot of fizzy drinks. And when I do, I don't want to spend twice as much so I can get coconut syrup and raspberry puree in it.

And if you can read the marquee, it says, "Try Utah's favorite pink cookie." A staple of the drink store is a cookie menu, particularly pink sugar cookies.

Photo Credit: swignsweets.com

They all have cookies. And while we're on the topic of pink, fry sauce is another Utah favorite.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

 

Fry sauce is a mixture of ketchup and mayo (and other things, like dill relish, worchestershire, or hot sauce). According to Wikipedia, it appears in cookbooks as early as 1900, but it was popularized in the 1950s by the Utah fast food chain Arctic Circle. You can get fry sauce anywhere in Utah. (I never take any pictures of my food, and I never order cookies at drink stops, so these pictures aren't mine.)

Now that you've seen the local flavors, come with me on a few road trips around the state.

This is Santaquin Canyon, about 5 miles south of my house. This is our favorite picnic spot and we have family gatherings up here a couple of times a year. It has been an even better place lately, since there was a major wildfire in the canyon three years ago and part of the road was destroyed. Now automobile traffic is blocked, and we just park and walk along the road for about 2 miles to get to our spot. It's extra quiet now that nobody can drive on the road.

We made a trip to the old mining town 15 miles west of where I grew up. This is Eureka, Utah, and it was once a bustling mining town, rich with both silver and gold. Now it's barely hanging on as a ghost town. Actually, I wrote my senior thesis in college on the Tintic Mining District out here. We took my history professor buddy because it was one of the few historical sites in Utah he'd never visited.

Speaking of historical sites, we visited Promontory Point, location of Golden Spike National Monument. This is where the final spike was driven to connect the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, completing the transcontinental railroad and connecting the East and West Coasts for the first time.

 

Traveling farther from home, we head south to Capitol Reef National Park in central Utah. It's a small park--and fairly isolated--so it's a nice place to visit and not be overrun with crowds.

One thing that makes Utah so cool is that three distinct geographical regions intersect here: the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, and the Colorado Plateau. Where I live, we have the Rockies to the east and the Great Basin to the west. You could see those elements in the pictures near my house. As you head south, though, you see lots of mesas and amazing red rock formations in the Colorado Plateau. I may live in the Wasatch Mountains, but southern Utah is my favorite part of the state.

Like Bryce Canyon National Park, about an hour's drive south of Capitol Reef. The contrast between the red hoodoos and the green pines is breathtaking from the rim.

But it's pretty incredible from the canyon floor, too.

We also traveled east of our home, from the Wasatch to the Uinta chains in the Rocky Mountains, and visited Dinosaur National Monument. Yes, those are exposed dinosaur bones in the rock face. There are literally hundreds of bones you can see in the wall; they just built the museum around it. 

And that about wraps up the sights I saw with my family this summer. We didn't go north, which is where all the people live. If you were to visit and say, land at the Salt Lake airport, I would recommend a couple of cool locations.

Photo Credit: Flickr

First, Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Here you can see the most famous of the 17 LDS temples in Utah. The domed building behind it is the Tabernacle, home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Photo Credit: thisistheplace.org

The second place I'd visit in Salt Lake is This Is the Place Heritage Park. It's a monument that marks where the first Mormon pioneers entered the valley and Brigham Young said, "This is the place," and they decided to settle here. There is a cool state park here where kids can experience different aspects of pioneer life, including making wagon wheels or watching a blacksmith at work. 

So there you have it: a virtual tour of my home state and some of the things I've seen. This is how I spent my summer vacation. How about you? I'm looking forward to more people taking up Matt's Blog Bat Around and letting all of us experience your corner of the country.