But he does not own Scooby Doo underwear

Day 2 of road trip...

We got dressed and ready to start our second day. Alex was walking around the hotel room getting his shirt on when I noticed he was wearing Scooby Doo underwear. May not sound strange but…he does not own Scooby Doo underwear.

We drove, drove, drove. Drove through Park City. Drove through Provo where I had to pull over so Alex could pee off the side of the road (lovely). Eventually we reached our first stop – Salt Lake City. I live in Denver and I’m very aware of a kind of mythical view of Denver by outsiders. Like a magical mountain town full of log cabins or something. So, I don’t know why I imagined SLC to be some mythical mountain town, but it’s a total and complete dump. My mother used to live there a long time ago and absolutely hated it. Seriously…ask her some day. She practically seizes at the thought of the place. Now, I don’t know the exact reasons why she hates it so much, but I do know why I hated it. It’s a nasty, brown, smog-fest. It looks dirty. The streets are numerical instead of named (I know, I know….sounds stupid, but as a tourist it was very confusing). And the area I visited was full of the most ridiculous collection of women I’ve ever seen. Women in their 40’s and 50’s absolutely refusing to dress age appropriately. I saw a women with her two teenage daughters and she was dressed exactly like them. At some point, you need to put some damn clothes on, stop label chasing so much, and tone down on the Bedazzler. No one thinks you look 22. Everyone thinks you look sad.

Anyway, we stopped at a children’s museum that was nearly impossible to navigate with all three kids. Children’s museums are best when all the children you have with you can actually explore on their own. I was limited because a huge section was “stroller free” leaving me with an area that was too old for Alex and one small little room. I took him to that small little room and let him build things, play with cupcake cups, and touch things. It was about as much fun as it sounds.

After the basically unsuccessful trip to the children’s museum, we stopped by a food court and I had a moment full of pride. I was rocking Clara in the stroller, feeding Evelyn a bottle in my lap, talking to Alex, and eating a slice of pizza. I wished someone had a camera or something.

We got back on the road and drove through the Salt Flats. Okay, so I had no idea that something called a Salt Flat even existed. Apparently you race on them and they are quite famous. When I told my brother in law what a pleasant surprise they were he looked at me and said, “World’s Fastest Indian??” When my face showed no glimmer of recognition he shook his head at me and gave me the saddest look of pity. I’ve seen that face before…on me…when I can’t believe Greg has never seen The Brady Bunch or Better Off Dead. Anyway, I was incredibly surprised and awed by hugeness of them. There is no way to adequately describe them or photograph the breadth of them. It’s sort of like an ocean of salt – just huge, vast, blindingly white everywhere you look. And at one point along the Flats there is a big, art tree thing. It looked like large, colored baseballs.

We stopped in Elko, Nevada to go the Northeastern Nevada Museum. Okay, here’s the thing – there’s a place in Houston called The Orange Show where this guy transformed his home into a work of art celebrating, among other things, his love of the fruit. It’s amazing and I appreciate anyone with that kind of devotion to detail. However, the guy clearly suffered from some sort of mental illness. Local artists and others have kept the Orange Show running and you can go see it for yourself. I believe most people going through there, as well as the employees, are kind of in on the joke. “Joke” doesn’t really sound right, but you know what I mean. Now the Northeastern Nevada Museum gave me a similar vibe – only I don’t think anyone else is in on the joke. We walked in and to the right there’s a large room filled with taxidermy. Filled. Hundreds of them. Lions, deer, bears, monkeys…you name it. Some are kind of grouped together- there’s an Africa part, a rock climbing quadruped part, etc. The two things that made me laugh out loud were the dead animals posed to look like they were attacking other dead animals (seemed undignified to me) and the elephant head that was mounted on a wall with the rest of the elephant painted as a mural. The place had to be the work of a mildly crazy person. Alex, by the way, loved the big, creepy room.

We walked to the other side of the museum and they had these sweet little dioramas of frontier life. I imagined the meetings in which people planned these out and designed them. As I wandered past the dioramas I encountered something else totally insane. Case after case after case of a gun collection. I wondered if each gun was used to kill one of the animals in the adjoining room. The whole place gave me a mixture of delight and uneasiness. And I’d recommend it to anyone travelling through Elko, Nevada.

We stopped at a nearby park to let Alex run around and give the girls a chance to stretch out on a blanket. Naturally, we met a set of twins there because, God forbid, we go anywhere and don’t meet a twin. After everyone was appropriately fed (including me, thank you very much) we were off to Winnemucca. The drive was largely uneventful except for my little joy at driving through a place called Pumpernickel Valley. I just liked the idea of that place.

Before visiting Winnemucca I only knew about it from reading the Tales of the City books. I knew it as a place with legalized brothels. After visiting Winnemucca (twice, actually, we stopped there on the way home), I basically still only know it as a place with legalized brothels. Not the most exciting place. But our motel with decent (a much cleaner version of the Swedish Inn in Kingsburg, CA). The woman checking me was, you guessed it, one half of a twin pair. Seriously…can’t avoid them. We settled in and got to sleep at a reasonable hour thanks to a time change working on our favor.

The next glorious morning, all the kids slept in until 8:00.