Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

We left the anonymous motel near the Salt Lake City airport without bothering to try to complimentary breakfast buffet, under the assumption that the food would be about as undistinguished as the motel.

An hour later, after a dramatic drive up over the mountains to the east of Salt Lake City, we arrived at Bear River State Park near Evanston, Wyoming. We walked along the paved path next to Bear River, a fast-flowing turbulent stream about fifty feet across that looked like a good place to fish. We walked for most of an hour, pausing to look at the showy Yellow-headed Blackbirds, with heads so stunningly yellow that their Latin name — Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus — tells you twice that they have yellow heads. We also stopped to look at the captive bison and elk, looking majestic even though they were stuck in fenced-in pens of only a few acres, lying on their bellies calmly chewing their cuds. We saw a young man fishing from the bank of the river. “Any luck?” I said. “Nothing today,” he said, “even though I been here for two hours.” “Looks like a good river for fishing, though,” I said. “Oh, it is,” he said enthusiastically.

We stopped in Green River to find a place to eat lunch. Walking along the sidewalk, Carol stopped to admire a handmade barbeque, with purple legs and a burnished stainless steel lid. The man who made it came out of his store to chat with us. The sign on the store window read “Mr. Cleo’z Exotik Oilz and Inscenze,” while the sign above the window read “Cleopatra’s Way Yummy Incense.” He showed us how he had over three thousand signatures on his wall, and I signed the wall as high as I could reach while he took a call for his other business, running the town’s taxi service. We bought some incense from him at the ridiculously low price of six dollars for thirty sticks. He recommended we eat at The Krazy Moose Restaurant across the street, so we did.

Late in the afternoon, Carol wanted a cup of coffee, so we stopped at Wamsutter. We drove to a combined supermarket and pizzeria. The parking lot could fit fifty cars, but there were only two other vehicles when we pulled in. Inside, the supermarket consisted of mostly empty shelves. Carol walked to the end of the store that was the pizzeria and bought a cup of coffee for seventy cents. The smiling woman who took our money told us that Wamsutter was an oil town. It was a bleak place, and we left without regret.

By the time we got to Laramie, we were ready for dinner. We found the Big Hollow Food Coop and stocked up on food for the next couple of days. The young woman at the check stand was singing along to Bob Dylan’s “Hard Rain”; she had quite a nice voice. When she checked us out, she told us that she was from the midwest, had moved to Laramie to attend the University of Wyoming, went to school for just a semester but decided that she would stay in Laramie. We told her that it looked like a nice place to live. She asked us about the Bay Area, and we told her that it was nice, but expensive. She said it must be densely populated, and we said it was. She had lived in a big midwestern city for a while, but because she grew on a gentleman’s farm, she found the big city was too much for her; yet she also seemed interested in hearing about the Bay Area. Maybe she was a little adrift.

The rest of the day, we drove in the increasing darkness, and arrived in Sidney, Nebraska, at ten o’clock.

Above: Medecine Bow Peak in Wyoming, as seen from Interstate 80.

Paul, our host at Cobb Mansion B & B, prepared baked eggs with herbs and cheese in individual egg cups, bacon, fresh fruit, and rolls. He said he was disappointed in the rolls because he can’t get the second rise to happen in Virginia City, which is 6,200 feet above sea level. This led to a discussion about high altitude baking. Anna, one of the other guests, and a native of Germany, said that when she moved to Utah where she now lives, she had to give up baking some cakes and other traditional baked goods because they all came out flat. Paul said that, contrary to what you might think, high altitude baking requires less leavening, not more. It was all very interesting to hear, but I decided I was glad we live near sea level.

The drive across Nevada was notable because it rained off and on all day long. The sagebrush was greener and brighter-looking than I had ever seen it before. We stopped at one rest stop — nothing more than a gravel lot with two pit toilets — that was surrounded with yellow flowers. In places, the flanks of the mountains, seven or eight thousand feet high, were covered with light green. I have never seen this stretch of Nevada look so alive. And looking out across the wide open spaces between the mountain ranges we could see rain showers moving across the landscape:

We didn’t see the sun for nearly the entire day. We stopped for lunch in Winnemucca, and the cloudy sky seemd to make the garishly colored signs for motels and casinos look even brighter:

The sun came out briefly and brilliantly for us when we stopped in Wendover, where it made the town look less tawdry and depressing for the short time it shone. The long drive across the salt flats of Utah was made more tolerable by the audiobook we’re listening to, A Thief of Time by Terry Pratchet. We finally arrived at our cheap motel near the Salt Lake airport at a quarter to ten, feeling just a little bit road-weary.

We left San Mateo at ten in the morning, and drove to Berkeley where we had a dim sum brunch with my cousin Nancy and her husband and daughter. From there we started driving west on Interstate 80. I had hoped to stop to visit a member of the Palo Alto church who now lives in the Central Valley, but the timing didn’t work out. We stopped at the rest area on Donner Summit, and I walked a little half mile loop trail through the heavily glaciated alpine environment. The little loop trail intersects the Pacific Crest Trail, and sure enough I passed two hikers with full packs on. We exchanged cheerful hellos, and I couldn’t help smiling at the similarities of, and contrasts between, driving on the interstate highway and backpacking on a long-distance trail.

We got to Virginia City, Nevada, at about five o’clock. We were too late for the tour of the Cobb Mansion, the bed and breakfast where we’re staying — and the house was interesting enough that we were sorry to have missed it — but we were in time for happy hour: a glass of wine, and time to chat with our hosts, Paul and Jeff, and the other guests. Paul made us a reservation at Core, a new restaurant in town. It was a little out of our price range, but this is our splurge day for this trip. The most memorable part of the meal was the appetizer: mussels in a light sauce with a touch of fresh mint; the delicate mint was a nice contrast to the rich seaside flavor of the mussels.

We stayed in Virginia City because we had both read Mark Twain’s Roughing It; this was the city where he got his first job writing for a newspaper, the beginning of his career as an author. Unfortunately, there was a big fire in Virginia City in 1875,after Twain had left the city, so there aren’t any buildings left from his time there. Nevertheless, you can see many of the things he describes: the little city perched on the side of Mount Davidson, the sage-brush covered slope of the mountain going up to the distant peak high above the city, the houses built into the side of the slope so that the main entrance to a house might be in the second floor, and so that the first floor of one house looks down onto the roof of the house below. And in honor of Mark Twain, I bought copies of the two little local newspapers, the Virginia City News, and the Comstock Chronicle.

Tomorrow we start driving to Salt Lake City.