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Published: April 6th 2006
The Good Morning Burger
This is the view I wake up to at my aunty's house through my bedroom window...Yes, it's true, I have converted to mormonism. The Spiritual aura of Salt Lake city was too much to bear and the path to my chosen higher power could not have been clearer. A religion where it is told that Jesus had a brother is a religion worth devoting my life to.. join with me now as I explore the majestic state of Utah and then travel east to Colorado and New Mexico and back again! now where did I finish off my last journal ...
My last journal ended as I was talking about our train trip from San Francisco to Salt Lake City, the first half was pretty bad but the 2nd half was a bit better and more enjoyable at the very least. After being in a bad mood I decided to walk down to the "snack car" and get myself a cup of tea to relax. I decided to sit in the "lounge car", which is a carriage in the middle of the train that has huge windows and lounges to sit on and enjoy a more scenic view of the surroundings. While I sat there, a group of mentally retarded people were sitting there, aswell.
Track Mania
A Sample of the rad arena we had to cruise on in Colarado It kinda cheered me up and I sat there watching a terrential rain storm soak the surrounding cabbage plantations while I thought deeply about how the Salt Lake City adventure may pan out. After my relaxation I decided to head back to my normal seat and try and get some sleep. It didn't really work, I wasn't surprised so I just sat there and talked to Horse for awhile. Not long after we hit the Sierra Nevada ranges, which is a mountainy area not far from the California/Nevada border, up in the northern part of both states. This part of the trip was pretty awesome for me because it started to snow very heavily, like a blizzard. With this awesome event, I decided to head back to the lounge car and get some photo's (none of which turned out) So I sat there for ages staring out the windows and I finally decided to crank some music, swedish prog rock would suit the mood perfectly. The snow lasted ages and I noticed some cool things, like how deep it actually was outside of the plowed train tracks. The "ding dong" things on the level crossings were completley covered upto their
A Castle!
Stumbled Accross this place on a roadtrip to eat Sushi in Pueblo, Colardo. This is one man's project, built the whole thing by himself so far. flashing red lights.. I found that most amusing and very scenic! After an hour of sight seeing, I decided to head back to my normal seat once again and drift off for a bit... this time it worked. Here's a playlist for my journey so everyone can be enlightened:
- Anekdoten - Gravity(Swedish prog rock at it's finest, what else needs to be said?)
- Minsk - Out of a Center which is Neither Dead nor Alive(not the best thing to try and fall asleep to but it's such a great album, I couldn't resist ...)
- Tripwire - Intellavoid(Is this psytrance? I think I can't label it but it doesnt sound like your normal metal or industrial sideproject)
- Fluidage - Harvester(ahh now this is sleepy time music, the soundtrack to my final rest before arrival)
Sometime during my sleep, we entered the state of Utah. The plan was that we were meant to hit Salt Lake city at 3am, then head to the Hostel and get 6 hours sleep ... meet my aunty at 10am and live happily ever after, however nothing ever goes as planned. The train was over 3 hours late due to the blizzard I mentioned earlier.
The Hills Have Snow
This is what you see when you look out from pretty much all the window's in my other aunty's home in Colorado. Pretty awesome. We got to the hostel just before 7am and the hostel manager wanted to charge us for 2 nights if we signed in at that time, so we bid the hostel farewell and I called my aunty and arranged for her to pick us up (turns out she really enjoys taking care of us) and she said she could be there at 9:30am to get us. I was getting nervous and anxious at this stage about meeting family I hadn't seen for 16 years, it all seemt a bit weird to me. 10:30am came around and she finally found the place and I got a big hug which was nice because it was like -3692428 degrees outside at the time. My aunty is really great and her hospitality is something that I will always remember and appreciate. Her husband "Louie" (who will feature a bit later) is also a nice enough guy. They have both made Horse and I's stay here quite enjoyable. It's hard to explain how awesome it was to have my own private room and a huge warm bed with "nice" linen, clean and fresh surroundings. Not that I have disliked my stays in hostels and on
Deathmachine
One of the 4 wheelers used to tear it up accross the ranch, with a super looking plateu in the background. The scenery in Colorado just oozed beauty. an air mattress on a Monk's floor but this was bliss. Most comfortable night's sleep for ages apart from the trippy dreams that have been haunting my sleep (and continue to do so)... Im blaming the massive amount of informations I have been soaking in over the past month or so for interupting my peaceful slumber. We were to spend 3 nights here in Salt Lake city before we were to take off on our roadtrip to Colorado. The first day in Salt Lake City we spent walking around downtown trying to find things to do and see... the task seemt pointless, I at least, was not motivated for another big city yet and just wanted to relax for awhile but we decided to push on. We walked through the cities big streets... the way the mormons designed the city when the first settled here was to have massive blocks seperated by huge 6 lane roads throughout the city limits. I think it was so horse and carts could easily do U-turns or something like that but I can't remember for sure. For those of you who know not much about the Mormons, here's a quick over view from what I remember after our visit to their HUGE temple and their museum in downtown Salt Lake. The man who founded the church was a guy named Joseph Smith, he was visited by some angelic figures in the woods near his home and was told to spread some new word to his people after he was given the first "book of mormon" ... well the religion spread like a disease through the local people and people from all accross the country set about on a Pilgrimage to find a place to erect their temple. After much hardship etc. They ended up at the sight that would quickly become known as "Salt Lake City" ... as far as I remember Joseph Smith died somewhere along the way. Murdered by mormon haters. The Museum told us nothing about their actual religion, like "why did jesus have a brother?" and "why can men marry 9 different women?" all it did was paint a glorious picture of contemporary mormon life. I shouldn't have been surprised. It should also be noted now that I didn't really convert to mormonism and shall continue with in my heathen ways for ever!
The Mormon temple and Museum was the most interesting part of downtown Salt Lake City, the place was a ghost town, just like LA downtown was... I figured that the conservative nature of the mormons added to the fact that not many living souls ventured the city streets during daylight hours. It wasn't until the 2nd or 3rd day here that we found out there was more to Salt Lake City than we first thought. It turned out that my cousin lived and worked here, he owns a tattoo store just outside of the downtown district. This cousin is the son of my other aunty who lives in Colorado. He's a cool guy and we spent some time in his shop talking to him and the other dudes who worked there and got a general idea about the real side to Salt Lake. According to them, only 30%!o(MISSING)f the population here is actually mormon but I think it would be a bit higher. I mention mormons alot because they're a rich religious group that pretty much runs everything that happens in Utah, like because they dont drink beer (or caffeine, no impurities!) they limit what can be sold here and actually have specially brewed regular beers done at 3.2%!a(MISSING)lcohol volume to control the masses. So it takes twice aslong to "get drunk" but you get tired trying and just consume too much liquid along the way. I guess it works but still, it sucks. Most people here just bring beer back from interstate but you do have to drive a fair while before you can get full strength beer. My cousin drove us around and we saw a few back alleys of the city with "cool" record stores and places you wouldn't see unless you had a local tour guide under 40 years old. We also went and checked out some of the scenic views that surround this city. All around here you can see snow capped mountains, it's trully captivating. The city is flat and bland looking but wherever you look you can see a "paradise" and you can take a deep breathe and realise that this place isn't so bad. We went to this canyon in the mountains with a frozen lake surrounded by forest, it looked just like Yosemite national park. We could have waited til here and saved $100 and seen the same thing!
On Friday morning, we got up around 6am and prepared for our great roadtrip. Louie, my aunty's husband, owns a ranch in Colorado and had to return as they were renovating a barn on the property. Just so happens that my other aunty and her husband live in the same town, so Horse and I packed our bags and saddled up, ready for an exciting adventure into cowboy country! We drove through different canyons to get through the mountains that imprison Salt Lake city and they were magnificent and the tempreture outside was -13 degrees, the coldest ive ever been in.. luckily we were in a heated truck and I quickly fell asleep. Unfortunatley it wasn't easy to sleep because Louie's slick turbo 4wd american monster truck was fitted with 2 of the most annoying devices ive ever seen, one was this satellite navigation system which stated "turn left in 1mile" or something similar every time a turn had to be made and the other device was this radar scanner that detected "cops" and their radars when they were coming towards you on the highway... of course Louie was driving fast so as soon as the machine started "beep beep beep" he would slam on the breaks and wake us up and scare the shit out of us. Such joy. The scenery along the way quickly became boring as soon as we crossed over into Colorado. It was desert country. Totally flat but it was an awesome sight in one respect.. a new side of this continent to experience. After an hour of "beep beep beep" and boring scenery I fell back asleep. When I woke up we were travelling through another awesome mountain range, this country has so many of them, it's insane. We stopped at a ski resort called "steamboat springs" it's pretty much like "Aspen", a rich place where movie "stars" come and ski and throw snowballs at each other. After a mammoth mexican feast (the best I have eaten so far in the US) we headed off and I drifted off again... thank goodness. This time I awoke as we were traveling through Denver (the capital city of Colorado) and it actually looked like a HUGE city, like this sprawling metropolis in the middle of nowhere but that's the only observation I took from this city as we sped along the 10 lane highway toward our final destination, only 200 miles to go now (400 miles into our trip) Let's take the time now to reflect on this time. Louie seemt to be the a-typical american, not the californian. This is where you can see the rift in the social structure of this country. Louie was the red blooded american guy, fit with his cowboy hat and cigar hanging from his mouth as he drove his mammoth 4 Wheel Drive. He loves George Bush and his country and hates the movie Brokeback Mountain ... seems that most "real" cowboys out here don't realise just how homosexual an image of a cowboy is anyway. It's taken a mainstream movie for them to be offended and "ooh-aahh" about and then to defend their cowboy image with masculine jokes to cover their embarrassment ...
"oh no, the cat's out of the bag ... After 10 hours on the road and 8 hours of Country and Western music blasting our ears through Louie's incab sattelite radio (the pain the pain ...) we arrived in Trinidad, which is the name of the town where we would spend the next week. I was getting nervous again, as I was about to meet my Mum's 2nd sister, another whom I had not seen since I was 6 years old. She was at Louie's property waiting for us, as Louie "dumped" us there and we herderd into her fancy 4wd (they all got big cars in the country!) with our bags and set off. Just like before with my first aunty, a hug and "my how you have grown" and the family reunion was working just fine.
Trinidad, the population ranges from 3,000 to 10,000 depending on who you ask. Im going to stick with the meaty figure of 5,000 for the purpose of this journal. So it's a small town, with only 1 Mc'Donald's store (which my aunty owns) and it's the world capital for transexuals, im being serious here... apparently this town had one of the original surgeons or something like that. We were served by a tranny waitress at a restaurant one night, so it's true, they do exist in that town! My aunty, unlike the other one, doesn't live in a huge 2 story house in suburbia but rather 10 miles further out in the wilderness... 5 miles along the highway and then 5 more miles curling around a huge mountain pass that overlooks the town of Trinidad. So it takes about 20 mins to get there from "downtown trinidad" and it's very nice there, Ill put some pics on here to show you. The mountain or "ranch" is pretty massive, it's subdivided into 200 lots or so of 35 acres each, my aunty and her husband Lee own one of these and their house is nestled nicely on the western side of the mountain with distant snow covered moutains once again in view on one side and the township of Trinidad and all it's splendour (oh and as I type this, there's snow falling outside in Salt Lake City... im never gonna get sick of this, pity we're leaving tomorrow...) My aunty's house in the "santa fe pass ranch" is pretty much total isolation, their neighbours are far apart and the surrounding hills and scrubland are filled with Deer and Bears, Rabbits and Mountain Lions... unfortunatley I only got to see Deer and Rabbits and not the other 2 much cooler beasties. Once again it was great to have a warm bed to sleep in but had to share the room with my travelling partner this time round. This place had clean mountain air, we found ourselves falling asleep at around 10-11pm most nights even though we barely moved during the day. At first I wasn't sure if we could last 7 days out here in the wilderness but it became clear that this was the break I needed... away from the bustling cities, having to memorise countless city street names and hostel addresses and bus/train schedules.. this was real outback country, american style. As per usual, we got treated like royalty by my aunty, being spoilt with food and being ferried about if we needed to get into town but we spent most of our time lazing about the house. Gave me a chance to catch up on my emails, replying in depth to some and writing new ones (still waiting for replies...) but hey I guess email is too nerdy to spend 5 mins on for some people. On our 2nd day there, we got the Quads going... well Lee fixed them up... quads like 4 wheeled motorbikes... and we were let loose on the 90 miles of dirt road that cut through the local ranch. We cruised at super dangerous speeds (remember we both dont drive cars back home..) and up and down slippery and grassy slopes, pushing our non-existant skills further and further as the day progressed. Eventually my skills came crashing, as a car came round the corner and freaked me out and I crashed out my 4 wheeler down a slight incline. Mild cuts and bruises ensued. With my travel insurance still intact, I head off again the next day for more shenanigans (sp?) Horse also managed to crash a few days later, so we can both laugh at each other, no-longer a one way laughing matter hehe.
During our stay at the country house, we met a few of their friends who lived on the other side of the mountain. A retired couple, who actually came from San Diego only 4 years ago and they were like "if we knew you were there, you could have met up with our daughter who still lives there" and after seeing some photo's.. it would have been a nice idea 😊 This couple had their dream "log cabin" they had built with a barn and a huge area for their horses. I counted 18 deer standing munching grass in the frontside of their property one night, it was pretty cool. One day Lee and his friend Bob (who lives in that house I just mentioned) took Horse and I to a rifle range in New Mexico ... which was about 40 mins South of the Colorado/NM border. We got to shoot guns like Americans do, it's pretty crazy how just about everyone here owns a gun (or many) and shoots animals... at times it felt like we were the weird ones with comments like "WHAT how come ya'll dont like huntin'?" and we were treated like crocodile dundee geezers from another planet. The shooting was pretty fun, I have to admit. Fired a whole heap of different rifles, include one with a scope which was rad and then firing a 50 caliber pistol, like a magnum which almost broke my hand with the recoil. Also fired a WWII era M1 Garrand, made famous in such games as "Call of Duty" and "Call of Duty 2" ... very very cool. Overall, I still dont know if I could shoot at an animal to kill it, not for sport anyways. Everyone (but especially Louie) is so proud of their "mounts" ... awesome Elk with HUGE antelers and Beautiful bears with massive shiny teeth, just murdered to be put on display and be bragged about. Such a waste. Scariest part was the Wolf Fur they had for sale. Wolves are so grim, why would you shoot one? Don't ask me, Im not american. We also traveled down to Santa Fe, which is the town where the settlers met along their east/west transcontinental trip after slaughtering 100's of Indian tribes. Got a real feel of such films as "Dances with Wolves" and other cowboy movies I haven't seen. Once again I didn't really go for the tourist but enjoyed the food and got pretty drunk there, too. When we go out here, my family pays for everything... even if you try and pay they resist, so bring on the more beer, I say hehehe. Overall the week we spent there was pretty awesome, just catching up with the family side of things and generaly relaxing my brain and eventually as the bruises went away, my body. Met some cool folk, had an awesome meal in a "trailer park" accross at the nearby town "Raton" in new Mexico... well it's a house these people lived in but it was surrounded by "alabamma man" type people for those of you who watch South Park, you would get what I mean eh. So that was an eyeopener. Their daughter was very friendly, too. She's 22 and enjoys shooting elk but she wouldn't be taller than 5 feet. It was crazy to imagine her shooting stuff. We watched cable TV and "Mcleod's Daughters" came on... gave them a REAL view of what our living conditions in Australia are like 😉 I touch briefly on this subject and will go into greater detail in another journal... possibly the next one! note: the subject is "how americans view australians". Last couple of days we just sat around and cruised casually on the Quads (until
someone crashed) and it was all over. I havent uploaded any photo's thus far but Im sure by the time someone reads this there'll be some cool pics up.
After 7 days in Colorado we left for our return trip to Salt Lake city, we left much more learned in American culture, or at least one seperate piece to what we experienced in California. The drive back was long but this time I came equiped with 20gb of music and lost myself in a musical journey rather than listening to country and western for 10 hours! It was pretty much the same journey ... hills ... desert ... mountains ... snow ... desert ... repeat all the way back to Utah, but this time we traveled through the state of Wyoming... so I think ive been to 6/50 US states now, a fair achievment 😉 We went through Park City which is another ski resort here and experienced more snow storm action (nope im not sick of snow yet) and then headed back into Salt Lake where we would spend the next 6 days... I wont bore you with major details because we haven't done that much here... just continued to chill a bit. Spent a day with my cousin again, had a gathering at his house and got drunk with some of his friends... watching 2 young dudes dancing to Johnny Cash songs is something I don't think I'll forget ever... well Im sure Ill forget til I read this journal sometime in the future... but anyway, we've just blended into a "non-backpacker vacation within a vacation" scenario for now but it all ends come Monday Morning. Oh yeah we went snow boarding on Tuesday and Wednesday... it was pretty cool but I really sucked at it and drilled my bones in all sorts of places. No pics because I was flat on my ass 90%!o(MISSING)f the time hehehe.
So yeah that's it... all upto date 40 days in as I type this. The plans changed and we're off to Las Vegas tomorrow (as opposed to last weekend when we were meant to go) so that will be totally awesome. Then it's back here to catch a flight to Seattle on Monday morning where my real journey begins... all by myself without Horse, he's heading down south to "party" and im heading up north towards Canada to be cold and stuff (grim).
So until next time ...
Bye 😊
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"Tripwire - Intellavoid(Is this psytrance? I think I can't label it but it doesnt sound like your normal metal or industrial sideproject) " Its progressive psychadelic drum and bass you fool!