Day Forty Three and Forty Four, Salt Lake City, UT: A Place to Stay?

When I first reached Salt Lake City – Saturday, August 1st – I had hoped to find a nice place to stay through couchsurfing.com, which I have mentioned before. I had sent out a few emails on the road down (Friday) and was hoping to hear back by Saturday night. Interestingly, my primary reason for couchsurfing had changed; when I reached Jackson, WY, I felt as though I needed a place to stay. I longed to sleep inside, get a shower, and enjoy at least a few of the goods provided by a culture and society. This was after only eight days of camping; upon reaching Salt Lake City, I had been camping for 10 straight days and felt no such need to get indoors. My primary motivation, then, for finding someone to stay with was the desire to experience the city with an additional person. Throughout my trip I’ve made extensive use of local information; in fact, I think I have relied entirely on this verbal guidebook.

(Above is a view from the road up the mountains in which I camped.)

In any case, my couchsurfing attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. Having arrived at the city relatively late in the day on Saturday, I drove to the Great Salt Lake just to have a look before I headed up into the mountains to find a campsite. This was a little more difficult to do outside of a larger city than it is anywhere in Montana or Wyoming. But, nonetheless, I was able to find a spur to spend the night. I spent the majority of the next day – Sunday – simply reading in a park within the city. This was an interesting experience, as I’ll talk about in my next update, because I was able to see another aspect of life that I had previously been spared.