Day 1
Monday, September 4
After thirty-five years of working weekends and holidays, it never occurred to me I had booked my flight out on Labor Day, one of the busiest travel days of the year. Fortunately, my flight was ridiculously early.
It's been a while since I checked a bag at the airport. You can imagine my surprise to find out you need to print out your own luggage tag stickers and attach them to your own bags. The guy manning the bag drop off said it's been two or three years. I'd love to know why the change. You still have to hand your bag over to an actual agent anyway. I reached out to Delta via Twitter(I refuse to call it X) and didn't get an answer.
Security was a breeze, leaving plenty of time for the walk to Terminal B through the rain forest.
What does it say about us when the airport bars are open and serving at 6:30A?
AVIS required a work email, so I did lose that really deep discount. The good thing, AARP offers 30% off. Not as good, but really helpful. The view from the parking garage in Salt Lake City...
The light rain and leaden sky dogged me for the first hour or so down I-15.
Once out of the Salt Lake City, it was an easy drive south on I-15 to the city of Spanish Fork. Two Franciscan Friars passed through the area in 1776 while trying to establish a new route between Santa Fe, New Mexico and the missions in California.
Downtown, there's a lighthouse shaped monument dedicated to sixteen Icelandic immigrants who had converted to Mormonism, left their homes and came here to live.
As you can see, the leaden skies continued as I drove south...
Then, just like that...
I pulled off the interstate in the town of Parowan. Two things caught my eye. The first was on Google Maps and it simply said "Dinosaur Tracks." There's even a Bureau of Land Management sign pointing the way to the parking area next to the road. In a small information kiosk, a display claims the tracks were left 65-74 million years ago.
There are a few spots along the trail with these markers...
They're adjacent to the fossilized dinosaur tracks...
Good thing since I never would have looked for them on the side of the rocks.
Just a few minutes further down the road is a larger parking area and walking paths to petroglyphs. The Paiute arrived here around 500AD. Most of the drawings are pretty self explanatory. Historians among the Utah Paiutes translated this series of drawings as representing their arrival in the area. It also tells of the tribe's leader who took them on the journey here.
It's not just the Paiute and modern day vandals who have made their marks on the rock. In 1849, Parley P. Pratt led an expedition looking for places for future Mormon settlements. Two years later, Parowan was officially settled.
It was still a little early to check into the motel, so I went off to check out Cedar City's one brewery, Policy King's. Here in Georgia, breweries are popping up all over the place. In Utah, unless you're in a big city or large tourism area, they seem few and far between.
Hannah was working when I walked in and the place was pretty quiet. I asked about the brewery's name. The name comes from Nathan Thompson's book, "Kings The True Story of Chicago's Policy Kings and Numbers Racketeers." Policy was the name of an illegal lottery style game that was big in Chicago's black community in the '30s and '40s.
A few years ago, a documentary called "King of Kings, Chasing Edward Jones, the Other Boss of Chicago" was released on it. You can watch the trailer for the film on their website.
My home for the night was the Cedar City La Quinta Inn and definitely one of the nicer ones.
Considering the early start and being on Eastern Time, I called it a day early. Besides, I had a full day planned for the morning.
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