Had a long texting session with my travelin’ buddy who is
the queen of free overnighting. She
directed me to the local Flying J truck stop, which I had planned to hit for a
much needed shower anyway, but she also gave me directions there and a bunch of
other good advice (like don’t overnight at certain Walmarts in Wyoming where no
overnighting policy is strictly enforced.
Good to know.)
I was messing with the cooler after I got up, stocking up on ice, when a
couple of kids trudged up and sat down on the cement steps right in front of
where Goose was parked. I asked them if
they were out of school for the summer, and they said tomorrow is their last
day. They looked happy about that. Turns out they were waiting for the school
bus which picks up a fairly big batch of kids from the Walmart parking lot.
After some fiddling, I got the Garmin to route me to the
Flying J. SLC has weird, numbered
streets that I don’t completely understand. Once again, Nuvi got me there with flying colors. Wow, I wish I’d stayed here last night, I would have been so much happier. I counted 5 big white Sprinter vans in the
lot, which made me feel so at home (I
miss you, Chester and BDV!!!). Spent a
good fifteen minutes hard labor, scraping bugs off the whole front end of
Goose. We hit some kind of swarm about
twenty miles out of SLC last night. It
was unbelievable. The wipers couldn’t keep up.
I don’t know what they were, but what had to be thousands of them ended
their short existence on Goose’s face.
Too bad she can’t eat bugs. I
should have grabbed a picture of it, but I was so ready to be able to see out
of the windshield again that I didn’t think about it until I’d cleaned the
worst of them off.
Got coffee and a shower as first priorities. They asked me at the register if I was a
professional driver. I said no, just an
amateur. For some reason they found this
hilarious. I guess after a long night
shift working the truck stop, any humor is welome. The wait wasn’t too long for the shower, but
I’m an hour later than I think I am because I still haven’t set my watch for
mountain time. Now getting a light
breakfast (which after last night I thought I needed) at the Denny’s. I guess I’d be a crappy professional driver,
always behind schedule, my customers tearing their hair out waiting for their
deliveries while I dither around looking at knick knacks and dawdling in the
shower.
I will be glad to get out of the city and back out into the
open spaces. I don’t enjoy spending time
in cities. I’ve always had a negative
vibe about Salt Lake City, and perhaps that’s a tad unfair. In my brief time passing through, I note that
it is surrounded by incredible natural beauty.
You can see the surrounding mountains with their green flanks and snow
tipped peaks from almost anywhere. There
is interesting architecture, and unlike certain urban areas I know, this town
doesn’t seem hell bent on erasing every trace of the natural world inside its
borders. I’ve passed natural, unchannelized
streams running right through town, landscaping that appears to be the wild,
native vegetation, and hints everywhere that nature would be happy to move back
in at a moment’s notice.
I’ve been distracted by wondering which of the people I see
are Mormons. And wondering who is
wearing the magic underwear. That guy
with the open shirt collar? Probably
not. The Mexican woman cleaning the
bathrooms at Walmart? I could be wrong,
but I don’t think so. I was starting to
think obvious Mormons are a lot scarcer on the ground in SLC than I thought
they’d be. Then while I was fixing to
tackle the buggy disaster on Goose’s face, an extremely white, clean cut,
preternaturally friendly and cheerful fellow met my eye and said, “Hello
there! How are you today?” Perfectly pressed polo shirt . . . .buttoned
up to the top button! Hah!
There had to be temple garments under there!
I smiled a polite hello and told him I was good and he didn’t
try to talk to me about the Angel Moroni, so maybe I was wrong. Anyway, I’m ready for some cowboys now. And I know where to find ‘em.
No comments:
Post a Comment