Clay is really sleeping well on this trip. He goes to sleep
about 8 to 8:30pm and he is sometimes still asleep when I get up around 6 to
6:30am. He finally told me about his rash. He told me days ago that he had a
rash and did I have anything for that. I offered him cortisone cream and
Benadryl spray but he didn’t want those. I offered him Gold Bond powder & I
know he’s been using it based on the bathroom floors. A day or so ago he asked
again if I had something else for a rash and he took the cortisone cream. Last
night he told me that he had figured out the rash. He said it started after he
sat on one of those pit toilets at a rest area crossing the Rockies. He said
that he had a perfect circle of rough red skin like a burn in a circle around
his butt and upper thighs. He said he thought he must have sat on a toilet seat
that had been cleaned with lye or some other caustic and burned him a ring of
fire. I won’t even start on what came next…. Honestly, at his age and doesn’t
know better than to put his bare ass on a strange toilet seat.
We were up a bit later today since we have a fairly short
drive to SLC and no plans. We went to breakfast and Clay ate cold cereal, a
hard-boiled egg and pastries. I had scrambled eggs with a biscuit and sausage
gravy and a piece of cinnamon raisin toast. We got packed up and checked out by
about 9am. We headed west on 9 to 17 then north on I-15 at exit 27. The speed
limit was 80mph and there was little traffic. We got off at exit 40 for the
Kolob Canyon portion of Zion National Park and spent an hour or more. We
checked in at the Visitor’s Center. (We have definitely gotten our money’s
worth out of Clay’s 2 Senior Access passes. Imagine what a good deal just
buying one pass would have been.) We drove the scenic drive all the way to the
end and took the moderate (not easy!) Timber Creek Overlook Trail to the end,
where you could see the north rim of the Grand Canyon in the distance. It was
very different from Zion Canyon and we were glad we stopped. We were back on
I-15 by about 11:30am. We stopped for a picnic lunch at a rest area near exit
82. I was a nice place for a freeway exit. The weather is beautiful, dry and
breezy with hardly a cloud in the sky. Highs probably in the 80s. Oh, btw it was
not the Western Family yogurt giving me the gas because it was all quiet in the
car this afternoon. Inexplicable.
We ran into heavy traffic just south of Provo and it lasted
all the way to the Inn on the Hill, our home for the next 2 nights. We got here
about 4pm. It is in a beautiful large old brick house on the corner of North
State Street and 200 North. It is about 2 blocks south of the capital building
and about 2 blocks north of Temple Square. It is on the side of a very steep
hill from Temple Square at the bottom to the Capital Building at the top. Once
we got our room key, we hauled our bags up about 100 stairs. Not really, it was
really only about 50 or so stairs. Really. We signed up for breakfast at 8:15am
tomorrow. They only served a maximum of 4 people every 15 minutes or so and you
have to sign up for a time slot the day before. The girl who checked us in was
some kind of a dingbat. She seemed confused and couldn’t answer the simplest
questions and she swore SLC’s blocks are shorter than the average city’s when
the fact is well known that they are longer.
Clay changed from shorts and a T to a shirt and jeans. We
set off. It was a hot downhill walk to Red Rock. We thought we may be a little lost on the
way and people wearing name badges were happy to offer assistance. I hate to
say it, but I was more than a little creeped out by Salt Lake City and its inhabitants. It
wound up being maybe 8 -10 (SLC) blocks to get there and the Temple Square will
be on the way back to the Inn. We got to Red Rock about 5:30pm. Clay lured me
here with the promise of premises brewed root beer for me. He had 5 3-oz. beers
and I think he liked all of them to varying degrees. (According to our waiter Utah had recently passed a law outlawing beer samplers or flights, though you could order up to 3 3-oz. beers at a time to create your own. Go figure.) I had the root beer and it
was nasty. You could have a refill for 50 cents and they also brewed their own
cream soda so I got it too. I didn’t like it either and Clay thought it was
nasty as well. We each ordered a 10-inch wood fired pizza and shared an Italian
sausage and a pepperoni. The pizzas were good. We got to Temple Square about
7pm and entered at the West Visitor’s center. We stopped and asked for a map,
about guided tours for tomorrow and about tonight’s rehearsal. She confirmed what we already knew but added where to enter at door 11. We wandered a bit and found a
sign taped up saying due to recording running long, the rehearsal would open to
the public at 8pm. We sat on a bench once and 2 missionaries proselytized us.
They have an app and you can read or listen to a free Book of Mormon, if you're interested. We got up and kept moving after that until we were stuck standing in line at
about 10 of 8pm as directed. They also explained the bag check and security
screening procedures we would have to go through once they opened the door. At
8pm with maybe 500 people lined up they came through announcing that it would
be 8:30pm. At 8:45pm we walked up and looked in the window and could see and
hear them still singing and playing and figured that there was no way they
would open a public rehearsal at all tonight and we walked uphill home as night
fell. We got back in the room at the Inn about 9:10pm. Disappointing!
Our Inn on the Hill room is Zion on the 2nd floor of the Inn on
the Hill. It is west-facing, but has a big bay on the west facing side so you
can see the Temple and downtown a block or so to the south. It is a smallish
room with a double bed. Good thing we are accustomed to that! It has a gas log
fireplace and a big bathroom with a giant Jacuzzi tub with a shower over it. It
has dangerously high sides again. When we arrived in the room there was a small
silver box with a silver bow on it on the bed. When we opened it we found 4
paper envelopes with the Inn on the Hill drawings on them with a locally made
thin chocolate mint. Very nice touch! That is the first time we have had
something like that on this trip. There is no fridge, no ice bucket. They have a
snack and cold beverages closet out next the stair landing but it is not the
same as keeping a bottle of iced water next to the bed. It will be a long 2
nights here with warm water and no ice cubes and a tiny bed. As I recall when
we were booking we had a hard time finding availability and this was a good
location and available, so here we are. The older we get the less I think I
like B&Bs. We paid $360 to stay here for 2 nights. $40 of that was tax! That included parking, breakfast and sodas and snacks. It was actually a pretty good deal for the location and quality. No real complaints here except for the steep hill and no access to public transportation, but I don't suppose there is anything they can do about that.
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