From the Darkest Skies to City Lights: Salt Lake City

Greetings from Salt Lake City! You know, Utah sort of kick-started this whole van-venture. Back in 2018, I was eager to incorporate more travel in my life, and I’d decided (to the complete and utter horror of everyone who cares about me) the best way to do that was to attempt to walk around the world. But before I started planning this feat in earnest, I took a trip. It was, technically, a business trip, because I was going to the Las Vegas Writers Conference (shoutout to the Henderson Writers Group, who does a phenomenal job organizing it every year, and who totally welcomed me with open arms when I showed up to the conference for the first time in 2016 as a naive 21-year-old).

Anyway, I’d heard about a great little loop that hit five National Parks and started and ended in Vegas, so I decided to rent a car and do the loop before the conference. Of course, seeing how I was still in college, I really needed the whole trip, including the three-and-a-half-day conference, to fit inside a ten-day window.

I ended up doing six National Parks, a National Monument, and Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in six days. Most of the trip weaved through Southern Utah, from the vast, cracked red earth of Canyonlands, through the grand arcs and hoodoos of Arches and Bryce Canyon, to the gleaming golden walls of Capitol Reef, the soaring views of Grand Staircase Escalante, and the immense natural wonder of Zion. Southern Utah enchanted me, and as I plowed down the rolling blacktop, wondering what incredible view waited over the next horizon, alternating between singing along to the radio at the top of my lungs and avidly consuming audiobook after audiobook, I fell in love with life on the road. I realized that this was the way to do things.

Walking around the world, aside from being dangerous, was more of a mission than a lifestyle. There’s no freedom in it. The slightest deviation from your course is an undertaking. If you see a sign that says “Dinosaur Fossils, Five Miles South,” it really doesn’t matter how cool you think dinosaurs are, you’re not adding ten miles to your journey.

But in a car. In a car you can take any path. Any interesting-looking side road. Follow the scenic route that’s longer but so much prettier. Be somewhere totally new and different in a couple of hours, rather than a couple weeks. Follow your instincts, be spontaneous, discover things you never knew were there to be discovered.

And that’s how I discovered vanlife.

Aside from that, when I was eighteen I took my first trip completely sans-older-adult to a concert in Salt Lake City. So I have fond memories of the place, though I didn’t really get to explore too much the last time I was there. I was excited to get to know it better this time.

Of course, maneuvering the van in a big city which I’m unfamiliar with is always going to be a challenge, and there was some construction on the I-15 which made coming into the city suddenly seem like a really terrible idea. I was white-knuckling it all the way to Kyle’s apartment.

Honestly, visiting Salt Lake City, traffic and all, was worth it just to see my friend again. I can count the times we’ve seen each other since high school on one hand, and the last time was years ago. It’s always fun to catch up with old friends, and this was no exception. Plus, it was fun to have someone else to talk to and play games with for a few days.

We managed to cram a lot into five days. I found, though, that I prefer smaller towns or wilderness areas to big cities, at least when it comes to living in the van.

I noticed on last year’s trip to Alaska that while cities offer plenty of large parking lots to park in, they’re less inclined to ignore you if they realize you’re sleeping in their parking lot. Small towns seem to really not care as long as you aren’t in the way or bothering anyone, but cities have more rules and more people enforcing those rules.

And I noticed this time that, with COVID, cities are way more difficult to manage. The crowds are hard to avoid, and most businesses really don’t want you lingering, even if you’re there as a valid customer (and not just trying to mooch off their WiFi to work on a blog post, like I was). Everything has limited hours, limited capacity, and there were a lot of things that wouldn’t even think of letting you in if you didn’t reserve a spot ahead of time (I’m looking at you, Red Butte Gardens).

At any rate, between the crowds (both on the roads and in the attractions), the rules, the lack of public restrooms (seriously, I’ve had more luck finding bathrooms on a hundred-mile-stretch of empty highway), I’m kind of anti-city right now. Which is a shame, because I usually love cities. The museums, the nightlife, the anonymity, it’s totally up my alley. But I think I’m going to put off major cities until COVID eases up.

I did get to see some awesome attractions, though.

The Downtown area and Temple Square are beautiful. The gardens are world-class and the architecture is varied and impressive. I spent a while wandering around the Temple area and City Creek Center, just enjoying the day, and then stumbled upon the visitor center.

PSA: they’re apparently having some trouble with the mapping platforms, so the main visitor center doesn’t show up as a visitor center (at least, not right now, they’re trying to fix it). It’s on West Temple Street, across from the Nordstrom’s at the west end of City Creek Center, right next to the Museum of Contemporary Art. I got a chance to chat with the fellow inside, a really nice guy who moved to Salt Lake for college and just never left. He joked that, because of COVID, if I asked for the manager, he’d go in the back and then come back out, and if I asked for the janitor, he’d go in the back and come back out. Apparently, they’ve had to furlough a staff of eleven.

I spent my first afternoon in Salt Lake at Clark Planetarium. If you’re into astronomy or physics, I highly recommend it. The exhibit is informative, interactive, and in-depth. They have a 1,700 pound meteorite on display, along with a wide variety of other meteorites ranging from sleek to rocky to sparkly and everywhere in between. There’s a giant pendulum which allows you to actually see the earth spinning on its axis, a simulator so you can attempt to land a rover on the moon, and both an IMAX and a dome theater showing a variety of pictures.

Entrance to the exhibit is free, and the shows cost $7 for IMAX and $5 for the dome theater. It’s more than reasonable, totally fascinating, and absolutely awesome.

They’re also doing a great job dealing with COVID. There’s a building capacity, marks on the floor to help keep people six feet apart, a mask mandate, frequent hand sanitizer stations, and I actually saw an employee standing by and disinfecting the interactive exhibits after each use.

Tracy Aviary was an awesome place to spend a morning. The birds have so much personality, and they have quite the variety. Some of the birds even have free rein of the park, and there are exhibits that you can enter, so you can really get quite close to a lot of the birds, with no fence in between you and the animals. I’m just starting to get into birding, so this was really a lot of fun for me.

Kyle and I did a few touristy things together over the weekend. We hit up the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium (which really made me want to watch Finding Dory, and after I found out Kyle had never seen it, I insisted we watch it). Once again, I was impressed by how comprehensive and immersive the exhibits were. the building is divided up into different parts of the world, and it isn’t just fish. Although there are a lot of those, and some really incredible and rare specimens, at that, there are also a ton of birds, an exhibit on bees, a troop of otters, a pair of Clouded Leopards, a display of poisonous frogs, lots of reptiles, and more. I will say that this seemed a little too crowded to me, it was actually difficult to get away from groups of people, and although there technically is a mask mandate, there were people wearing their masks around their necks and no staff members asked them to wear the masks properly. If you’re looking to feel safe despite COVID, this is not the place. Try Clark Planetarium (see above).

We visited Capitol Hill, though of course all the buildings were closed. The building is spectacular, though, and now I can check it off my list of State Capitol buildings (I’d like to be able to say I’ve seen them all, one day).

The last thing we did before I moved on was visit Park City. The mountains are beautiful, and the town is absolutely charming. We wandered around, enjoying the music and the warm weather, and window-shopped. Summer Sundays they close the main street to motor vehicles, which really amps up the small-town art-fair vibe.

Salt Lake was a great stop. But now it’s on to Wyoming, where I’ll be visiting more National Parks (and collecting more stamps for my National Parks passport): Grand Teton National Park and the legendary Yellowstone, home of more than one American icon.

Grand Teton National Park sponsored my first notable mishaps. Stay tuned to find out why I was almost trapped in the Visitor Center parking lot for two days, why I spent three hours sitting on the curb, and what I learned about community without even having to leave my van.

Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram @thecarsoncosta for more great photos of my travels and sign up for my newsletter on www.carsoncosta.com for monthly updates and a peak behind the scenes.