Bounce

If you’re looking for a nice day trip from Park City or anywhere in the greater Salt Lake City metro, you could do worse than driving up to the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake itself to visit a number of iconic attractions.

If you’re lucky, you’ll cruise up old US Highway 89 through the heart of Ogden, a major railroad hub and home of Weber State University, home of the Wildcats. And did I mention the Noodle Parlor? Although this parlor is absent from Yelp, locals claim it’s noodle-icious.

Then heading west out into the desert, past 1) Corrine – the unofficial Gentile Capital of Utah, so named because it as founded by settlers who weren’t Mormon back when the railroad was coming through; and 2) a huge rocket fuel manufacturing facility – you come to the Golden Spike National Historic Site, where the Union Pacific Railroad’s west-moving tracks met up with the Central Pacific Railroad’s east-bound tracks in 1869.

If you’re lucky, you’ll catch a tour of the engine house with Ranger Chuck and learn about the modern replicas of the two steam locomotives in the famous picture taken the day the transcontinental railroad was completed. Chuck is standing next to the Central Pacific Jupiter, which was built in Schenectady, NY, and sent by ship to San Francisco in 1869.

The Union Pacific was represented by Engine No. 119, built in lovely Paterson, NJ, and featuring a swell image of the Great Falls of the Passaic River.

Then it’s time to drive half an hour down a dirt road to Rozel Point, which features two jetties.

The first is defunct and decrepit. But in the 1970s and ’80s, the aging bulwark was part of an oil exploration effort off the point, one which produced 10,000 barrels a day for a few years.

Random little black animals can often be seen sniffing around these ruins…

…where oil still oozes up through the muck. Next thing you know, old Jed will be a millionaire.

Just to the west is an art installation from 1970: the Spiral Jetty, designed and built by Robert Smithson, who, like the No. 119, was a native of the Garden State. Smithson is known as a pioneer of the earthworks movement, which found mid-century artists making conceptual statements about life, dirt and rocks. Smithson died in a small plane crash a few years later while scouting locations for another earthworks piece near Amarillo, TX.

And speaking of flight, there’s a mysterious team operating a drone on this day. Turns out they’re working on a big project that involves 3D imaging of natural and human-made topographies.

Hiking up the hillside to escape the drone, another threat is discovered, but it is also easily escaped.

And on top of the ridge, the spendor of this jetty is revealed.