We woke up this morning to beautiful skies, although there was a light dusting of snow on the picnic table near our site. It was cold this morning, but it was nowhere near as cold as yesterday.
We continued west through the Wasatch Mountains. I remembered from my last trip on this stretch of I-80 that there was a place called “Devil’s Slide” so we stopped and got a quick look at it. It’s a couple rock outcrops that form a strange looking channel that could indeed make a good place for the devil to slide down. It wouldn’t be so good for the rest of us!
It was a short drive to Salt Lake City, only about three hours, so we arrived in early afternoon. Our first stop was at a Les Schwab to try to get our rear brakes fixed because Mark noticed when we had the tires changed that the pads on our rear brakes were worn thin. The guy here told us that it could take three or four hours to change the brakes and that they didn’t have the parts today. That meant we’d either have to break up our day of being tourists tomorrow, or we’d be really late leaving here on Thursday. We had lunch across the street while we waited for them to look up the parts and give us a quote. While we were eating they called and gave us a quote of $1000. We decided to wait till we get to Reno and see what they have to say there.
We finally came to our KOA. Our spot here is really nice. We have fall leaf colors interspersed with snow covered pines. We’ve been having trouble with the electric motor on our steps, so Mark got down under the RV to see if he could fix it. While he was down there, Dobby escaped out the open door. I shut Kimba into the bedroom and went to get Dobby. He was on the other side of the RV next to us, and didn’t seem quite sure where to go from there, so I picked him up and brought him back in the RV. Soon after, the man from the RV next door came over and said his son had seen Mark working on our RV and wanted him to come over and see if he could help. When Mark explained the problem with our stairs, it was obvious the man wasn’t a mechanic. However, he said his other son saw Dobby wandering outside their RV and almost thought they had a new cat. He was disappointed when I came and got Dobby. The man seemed really friendly and said to let him know if we needed everything. That was really nice! Mark finally managed to turn the motor off on the stairs so they’re stuck out. He’ll unstick them and pull the wire on the motor before we leave.
It was still mid-afternoon so Mark took our car off the trailer and we took it through a car wash. (It was in dire need!) Then we took off to try to find his brother, Bruce. Bruce was a green beret who was killed in the Tet offensive in Viet Nam. His grave is in a cemetery somewhere in this city. We drove till well after dark and never found it. Mark couldn’t remember the name of the cemetery and only vaguely knew what direction to drive, so we couldn’t stop to ask for directions. Mark decided he’d look it up when we got back to the RV.
After giving up on looking for the cemetery, we drove around for a while looking for a grocery store where we could get a few things for breakfast tomorrow. It took us a while to find that too. Tomorrow we plan to leave most of the driving to a free shuttle bus that picks people up here at the KOA and takes them down to Temple Square. Mark wants to show me around, and I’m hoping to get some time in the big family history library here. I’ll write about it tomorrow.