SNOW...SALT...AND RAIN

We are so pleased that we had fab weather going through Yellowstone National Park yesterday (Friday), because today we got all sorts. We decided on the spur of the moment to head south to Utah (Ogden north of Salt Lake City) instead of going across Wyoming.
Interesting thing about Wyoming. No one pays income tax! Wouldn’t that be cool. Can’t understand why all Americans haven’t moved then to Wyoming! Apparently the timber and oil industry is so rich in this state that the locals don’t need to pay tax. My kinda state.
The landscape was changing too today. We had enormous plains banked by more snow capped mountains. Though not as high as the one in Yellowstone. The lakes are huge. In NZ we think that Lake Taupo is huge – i mean it’ the biggest lake in the Southern Hemisphere. Well, readers, the USA has HUGE lakes, and not just one, but so far Montana and Wyoming have heaps of them. More snow, more plains, more mountains. But we also drove through tiny towns boasting their pioneer history in the way the buildings were designed to blend into the scenery and looking as if they have been there forever. Bear Lake, we stopped at for a moment because we spied a Ford Single Spinner (1949) in someone’s backyard. Neil went into to investigate and got chatting to the owner. He tells us he is going to restore it /or hot rod it one day. We’ve heard this from so many people. Their ‘one day’ dreams. But most cars are lying neglected along with several other. It seems like every ten year they buy a new one and just park up the old one in the paddock.
Bear Lake seemed to be a burgeoning resort town with clusters of modern day log cabins. This man pointed out the oldest house in the vicinity, it was made by hand in that the builder cut down the logs with an axe, shaped them all with the axe and cut all the tongue and groove timber with the axe. Truly a work of craftsmanship and still be standing today.
Torrential rain going through a gorge kept the speed limit down, i.e. 2 speed wipers couldn’t keep up. We have stopped at Ogden Utah, and yes I’m old enough to remember that this was the hometown of the Osmond (i.e. Donny Osmond), but not old enough to remember the dinosaur that we are going to see today – Eccles Dinosaur Park. Ogden is surprisingly quite big. Being in a Mormon state virtually nothing was open yesterday (Sunday) which is quite unusual for the USA.
Also heading into Salt Lake City to view the lake today too.
The sun is shining, hopefully the rain will stay away. The bottom of the state has been hit by a deluge of floods, so we will have to rethink our driving next week when we come back to Southern Utah after the wedding in Boulder.
Happy day everyone
Jane and family