Touring Salt Lake

Day 23 Brigham City UT Salt Lake Area

Today we needed NOT to travel, so we did a little sight-seeing. We headed toward Salt Lake, not too far from the airport, for our first stop.

Jim wanted to return to a copper mine that we visited in an earlier trip (2003 or 2004) reportedly the largest open-pit copper mine in the world.

The Kennecott Copper Mine certainly is worth the trip up the hill. Its massiveness is hard to absorb at first. Standing at the edge of the pit makes a person feel very small indeed.

The mine is 2 3/4 miles across and 3/4 miles deep, TWO of the Sear’s Towers stacked one on top of the other would still not reach the top. All of the roads in the mine, if stretched out would be over 500 miles.

And those trucks (that look like little Tonka toys in the picture) …

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  The trucks that haul the ore are larger than many houses and weigh more than a jumbo jet.

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  They stand over 23 feet tall and can carry from 255 to 360 tons of rock.


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  The truck driver rides about 18 feet above the ground -- nearly two stories high.



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  Each tire on these big trucks costs from $18,000 to $26,000 and lasts just 9 months.

Later, after a stop at the bottom of the mountain that the mine is located at, we had lunch. There is a huge shopping plaza with ust about every store a person could want. Even SAMS, or as we see it…CHEAP hot dog combo/hot dog combo/pizza (Jim) lunch!

Fully sated we headed back in the direction of Brigham City, where we left the RV and the dogs to a state park on an island in The Great Salt Lake. We’ve been here several times, but have never actually got near the lake.

Antelope Island State Park is different and interesting. It is a 17 mile long island accessible by a causeway. Salt Lake is so salty that only brine shrimp can live in its waters. There they do VERY well because there are no fish to prey upon them. It smalled really funky on the causeway…like an Oriental grocery, if you’ve ever had the pleasure.

The other thing that flourishes are the brine flies.
While still on the causeway Jim was wondering if some small bushes between the road and the shore of the lake were on fire. It certainly looked like smoke was rising from them. No, not a ‘burning bush’, the black undulating masses above the bushes were brine flies! Yuk.

Fortunately, as we climbed higher on the hills on the island the flies vanished. At one point there is a turn out to drive up on a hill to get a panoramic view of the lake. Really is a spectacular lake, but so inhospitable. All it needs is a few palm trees and a person would swear they were on a Caribbean island.Fortunately, we were in the Jeep because the trip down the hill had a 23% downgrade…a large vehicle nightmare!

One end of the island has the original farm of the people who once called it home, still a working farm, now run by the state. Apparently there are antelope (duh, it’s ANTELOPE Island) here, but we didn’t see any. They have a buffalo herd (park literature states 600) roaming the island and we saw ONE. Don’t know where the others roamed.

After a stop at Wal-Mart for a rotisserie chicken for supper, we drove a harrowing, rush-hour ride back to Brigham City/ RV/dogs.
Jim did some laundry (I could really get used to that!) while I threw some dinner together. Can’t really say I ‘cooked’ dinner…rotisserie chicken courtesy of Wal-Mart, rice a roni, and a can of green beans.


We settled in for the American Idol Finale and thoroughly enjoyed all the big name stars performing. We would have been happy with either Kris or Adam winning. Adam is an incredible talent, but is guaranteed stardom. American Idol was founded on giving a brand new talent a stepping stone to a career. I think Kris was more in that category. He seems like a sweet guy. I hope he stays well grounded, and doesn't’ let sudden fame go to his head.

Tomorrow we are heading off in a southerly direction (still) on I15 toward the Zion Canyon area, southern Utah.