Salt Lakes

Wednesday 5^th June – over half way now.  We left Jackson in early morning sunshine (promising) and followed the Snake River south-west and then south along the western edge of Wyoming. Many of the valleys in this area are so large, that they all have an underlying fault structure, not carved out by rivers alone; they mainly trend north-south.  We stopped at Afton midmorning , the main street crossed by an arch of elk antlers.

  We then turned south-west again and moved briefly into Idaho. We climbed Snake Pass and after this it was downhill all the way (literally). We moved into another wide north-south valley, Star Valley. The ground was put down mainly to ranching of horses and cattle. In this area we crossed the Oregon Trail again – that’s a whole story on its own.

To the south of this valley, Bear Lake stretches into Utah. There are many shorefront properties and small settlements along the eastern shore and the lake was very blue. At Garden City we drove to a view point above the lake from where we could see for many miles, as far as the Uinta Mountains in north-eastern Utah.

The descent from here was quite rapid and we were soon approaching Great Salt Lake. We were soon in the built-up area, but did not glimpse a view of the lake. By 4 pm we arrived in Salt Lake City. There was an hour to spare in Temple Square, the Mormon centre of the city where the Tabernacle is situated. Tony and I chose to visit the Family History Library, an impressive facility run by the Church of Latter Day Saints. After checking into our hotel, a group of us had dinner at the Lion House, formerly the home of Brigham Young, and a tour of the Beehive House, his original office. The centre of the city has been developed on a grand scale by the church, with wide streets and large administrative buildings. Fifty per cent of the city’s population are Mormons.