Crapping on a yak.....overland to the other side of the world and the rest: Day 320

Waking in the morning, I find ourselves parked by the Great Salt Lake. It is a good 100 metres into the lake before it is deep enough to lie back and float. It has five times the saline quotient of sea water, but is not warm enough to lie in comfortably for long periods, though it gets warmer the further out and the deeper we go. Jimmy tells us there has been an oil leak in the lake and that we may be the last group to be able to go into the lake for a while.

I have my first shower for a few days at the facilities there. I take my swimming trunks off before having the shower, but find when they dry that they are crunchy stiff from the salt.

Back on the bus, Charlie is again dominating conversation, extolling on everything from the Roman Empire to cars. Describing the German Visigoths who took over much of the western Roman Empire as ‘hard, but fair, like the Republicans’ while Romans had become ‘flaky, like the Democrats’, this may seem a surprising viewpoint coming from a self proclaimed communist / socialist. I think this self-description stems from his interactions with Russians during his military career in the seventies and finding them to be human just like anyone else.

By lunchtime, we are in Salt Lake City and Petra, Adele and I head straight to The Church of Latter Day Saints Temple Square, i.e. Mormon HQ. There is an information centre and chapel that we go into, but we are not allowed into the towering and mock gothic temple as this is for members only. We do get to see a scale model of it in the info centre though.

Some more of the Green Tortoise group catch up with us and we are invited by two Mormon Sisters to take a free tour. All the tour guides are ‘sisters’, and they aren’t ageing nuns, but all young women of a broad range of international heritage, with the flag of their home country on their name badges. Our guides are from Finland and Indonesia.

As much as being Mormon HQ, this is the HQ of religious kitsch. We are shown rows of brightly coloured paintings of biblical scenes, while the highlight of our tour was being sat in a semi-circle around a statue of Jesus which delivers a biblical speech in the requisite big booming God voice.

Construction of the temple began in 1853. Inside the chapel, our guides seem proud that the marble like pillars are actually made of plywood, as if this demonstrates Mormons’ humility. Given the superficial quality of the place, it is perhaps suiting that the chapel doubles as a TV studio, with a broadcasting suite built into the back of the chapel.

The whole temple complex is highly maintained and, while these may be the oldest buildings in the area, they could be almost new. Petra is taken aback by the opulence of it all.

At the end of the tour the Indonesian sister says that having gained an American accent, she would now like to acquire a Scottish one. Ginger-haired fiddler Neil obliges her by teaching her some Scottish words and performing a rendition of ‘The Bonnie Banks o’Loch Lomond’ with her.

There was no strong evangelical zeal from our guides during the tour, but at the end we are asked to fill in comment cards leaving our contact details. I give only my name and my address as ‘England’, so it will be quite alarming if I start receiving post from them.

In the information centre there is family tree which links Presidents Nixon, Ford and the Bushes to one of the founding Mormon families. There could be more, but maybe they turned out to be Democrats.

Leaving the Mormon complex, I hold Petra and Adele’s hands, proclaiming them as my wives. When in Salt Lake City, do as the Mormons do....

Our campsite tonight is at the Mystic Hot Springs near Monroe, Utah. This is a low profile but unique place out in the sticks. Hot springs roll down the red hills and are capture by a variety of bathtubs, the insides of which are now caked with a layer of red mineral cemented to the inside of the tubs. The bathtubs are perched on the hill overlooking the campsite with various cabins and mobile homes resting among the red rock scrubland landscape.

There is a collection of decaying buses here, a couple of which are the old yellow school buses which make me nostalgic for my childhood school days. Mind you, eating an ice cream sandwich after lunching on a $1 stall burrito in Salt Lake City made me nostalgic too.

Mystic Hot Springs is owned and run by middle aged and multi-skilled hippy Mike. Like many people in the mid west he doesn’t like to see alcohol being consumed. This isn’t because of any religious principle though, it’s just that he prefers alternative methods of relaxation.

Inside his office / home (‘open 24 hours a day, seven days a week’), he has a performance room and studio with a stage, TV cameras and sound recording equipment. He generously lets us make use of the facilities acting as music producer and director to the camera crew of Petra, the Asian Aussie Kim and German Daniel. Charlie does a few of his songs (‘I’m your tow truck driver, baby do you need a tow?’) and then Tai, who is a regular performer in her home town of Seattle, teams up with Neil on his fiddle. Generally, I prefer music with a dark edge, but Neil shows he can do sensitive and the combination with Tai’s voice is quite beautiful.

Finally, I get a turn, but Petra and Kim have abandoned their cameras by the time I start. Though last on, I am definitely not the main attraction as I hammer out another version of Nick Cave’s ‘The Mercy Seat’, my now oft repeated go to number, this being the only song I can remember how to play. I break my pick and the skin of my finger as I reach a crescendo at the end.

During the evening, some high school kids show up at the springs in their pick-up trucks, probably mildly inebriated. Mike knows at least one of them, but is less than welcoming, making it clear they are not allowed into the hot spring pool or tubs. He asks the girl he knows if they are going or staying. ‘Going’, comes the reply, but they hang around for another twenty minutes before speeding off in convoy down the dirt track. I get the feeling Mike is used to dealing with potentially troublesome guests.

Some of us are sleeping under the stars tonight and there are gasps of amazement as a shooting star flashes across the sky, exploding in two above us. Unfortunately, I am having a nightcap at the table under a tree, so I miss it.