To Salt Lake We Go!

Yes. I am behind. Ian and I are one day away from the end of our trip, yet I have barely covered our travels from this week. I have a looooong day in the car tomorrow across the flat and desolate state of Kansas, so maybe I'll get caught up then. 

We said our goodbyes to Melissa on Monday morning as we left Spokane, discussed the next possible time we could all get/travel together, and left knowing that it was a ten hour trip tour next destination, the Salt Lake City area. Although it was contrary to logic, we had to go west on I-90 for a bit to pick up the next major highway.  We didn't get too far outside of Spokane before the landscape completely changed. Washington is known as the evergreen state, but I'm calling bull on the eastern part we saw. As we traveled south through Oregon, we saw the same thing. I had no idea that area of the country could be so dry!!

We stopped in Minidoka, Idaho (near the tiny town of Jerome, Idaho) to see the remains of the Minidoka Japanese Internment Camp of WWII. I really wanted to go because one of the summer books that I assigned is Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, and one of the main characters of this novel is sent to that camp. (If you haven't read the book, I definitely recommend it!). I thought it would be really cool to take pictures and show my kiddos the remains of the camp this fall when we discuss the novel.  

Although Minidoka quickly became the seventh largest city in Idaho as more and more Japanese were interned there, today it is nothing more than part of the Idaho desert. The sprawling acres of the camp were sold off, and most have become farm land. We walked around and read the placards describing what each building was used for.  It took us about forty minutes to tour the whole camp, and even though it was five in the evening, we were drenched with sweat and COULD NOT imagine what life would have been like on a daily basis in such a harsh and unforgiving climate. 

When we got back on the road, we still had about three hours to go. The Idaho desert turned into the Utah desert. We passed by signs warning drivers of possible dust storms and high winds, and I'm guessing that "Rattlesnake Pass" got its name for good reason. 

I honestly thought that Utah was one big desert, but the closer we got to Salt Lake I was proved wrong.  The sun was setting (at 9!!) as we rolled into town, and the backlight of it against the mountains was incredible. It bounced off the clouds, providing this gorgeous purple haze.  Well, I thought I could wrap up all of our Salt Lake experiences in one blog, but I think I'll cover the rest tomorrow in a different one, and I'll further discuss how my Utah-is-one-giant-desert theory could not have been further from the truth.