As we had come from Sacramento via Hwy 80, we entered the Utah at Salt Lake City, so we decided to check that city out.

We did not know too much about the place other than it is where the Mormon Temple is located. Additionally, we also wanted to see the actual great salt lake, after which the city is named. This lake is where the great salt lake land-speed records were established and wanted to see where these were occurred.

So we found a nice campground at the KOA, which turned out to be in the middle of town. It was also a camping place with the fastest WiFi speeds we had ever experienced when at a camping. It was a massive 101 Mbs (we usually were happy if we got anything faster than 7 or 8 Mbs).

Without a real plan to explore the city, we made the local “Tourist Information Center” our first port of call, because that is what one does in a new place. Turned out it was a beautiful historical building and (bonus) it is situated right across from the Capitol Building, the seat of Utah’s government.

After now knowing what else to see, we first checked out the capitol building before heading off to find the Mormon Temple.

The Mormon Temple

This is the 6th temple completed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the most recognized LDS Church building in the world. The site for the temple was selected by LDS Church President Brigham Young just days after the first wave of Mormon Pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley, in July 1847. The official groundbreaking for the temple took place on February 14, 1853. 

We are not mormon, but both knew people who were and they spoke very highly of this temple, hence our interest to see for ourselves. Upon arrival, we were stunned to see how beautiful the building is. Simply SUPERB, as shown in the following pictures..

What surprised us was that we were not allowed in! Unless you are a registered Mormon, you cannot step inside the building, we found it somewhat strange for a church, which normally is open to all. Very disappointing.

The Great Salt Lake land-speed records

As stated earlier, we definitely wanted to see the Great Salt Lake. As Travel and Landscape photographers, unique places like that are of extreme interest to us, especially because salt lakes are not a common thing to find.

And we were not disappointed!

Words kinda fail me! Statements like; “Amazing”, “Awesome”, “Immense”… somehow don’t come close to the actual emotions and overwhelming sense of awe that wells up in you when you stand there looking out over this immense, flat, salt expanse. This brief video shows how large it is.

The place is also famous for the world land-speed records that have been set here. The attraction, of course, is the immaculately flat surface, which makes it (somewhat) safer to drive at these high speeds.

There is a plaque there commemorating these events but the speeds are listed are in “Miles per hour”. The internationally recognized “World Record” is typically measured in Kilometers/hour. So the 666.407 miles/hour listed on the plaque below is equal to 1014.656 Km/hour and was the FIRST EVER record set that was higher than 1000 Km/hr! That was back in 1970!

This record has since been broken several times, but not at these salt flats. The current standing record (an amazing 1223.657 Km/hour!) was established at a similar speed-event in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada (north of Reno). The same Black Rock Desert that is known for the annual Burning Man festival.

There are still speed events going on at the salt flats, but there are growing environmental concerns about the salt. The thickness of the salt crust is a critical factor in the racing use of the salt flats. Recent studies sho shown a reduction in this thickness, especially in the northwest area where racing occurs, and the events of 2015 and 2022 were even cancelled due to the poor condition of the salt.

With all that, we were really very happy to see these salt flats up-close. We even got to walk on them. A great experience.

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After we got off the main road into Thomson Springs we headed to the Canyon, only to miss it completely! At least that was the conclusion we reached after driving a dirt road for about 45 minutes with no petroglyphs anywhere to be seen.

We did run into a ghost town, the old town of Sego. Never a large town, there were only a few buildings left, the largest was no more than a skeleton, the others could be located only by their sandstone foundations.

Also along the dirt were ruins of old bridges, quite a number of them. Based on the dry creek beds they crossed, we concluded that these creeks are subject to some flash flooding as the erosion and depth of the creek beds were quite impressive. The folk who used to live there obviously built these old bridges to make sure they could get into (or out of) the town.

The old town of Sego was a coal mining town which never had a population more than about 500. It went through some trying times, the mine got sold twice before it ended up being bought out by the miners themselves. Eventually, they lost it all when coal-powered locomotives got replaced by diesel engined versions, diminishing the need for coal.

Back to the pictograms

Petroglyphs is the word used for art that is chipped or scratched into the rock, while pictograms are painted on the rock. After shooting the ghost town, we decided to head back to see where we went wrong in the original search for the petroglyphs.

When we finally found them, it was like “duh, how could we have missed them?” They were right there in front of us, clearly visible from the road. There was even a parking lot which we HAD seen, but because the sign said “no camping, day use only”, we never stopped, thinking this was just a picnic area.

The pictographs (paintings) were amazing! Spread across multiple panels of sandstone rock (on both sides of the road), we spotted about 8 different clusters of multiple drawings. We had heard they were impressive, but, did not expect what we saw. One of the panels was life-size! No kidding, the panel depicted a group of “people” with each of the individual figures being about 6 feet tall. Quite amazing.

What was really disturbing however, was to see the vandalism. There was graffiti and writings and someone had even used the figures for target practice, based on the bullet holes that are visible. What is wrong with people? Some of these picograms are 3000 years old and have withstood the erosion of wind and rain, then some idiots destroy things in seconds.

Anyhow, these old drawings are more than intriguing. Apart from marveling at the age and wondering about the people that lived in these barren lands, the designs are quite amazing if not puzzling. Many of the “people” are depicted with antenna-like things coming out of their heads, others have huge round, bulging eyes and none of them appear to have arms. Looking at them, it is quite clear why people have wondered about ancient visitations from aliens.

Kinda strange don’t you think? It leaves you with a somewhat “creepy” feeling when you stand there looking at these face-less beings that seem to state down upon you. 

Turns out the paintings are from, at least, four different cultures who lived in this region:

• The Ute tribe dating from A.D. 1300.
• The Fremont culture which thrived from A.D. 600 to 1250
• The Barrier Canyon period from around 2000 B.C., and
• There is also rock art from the Archaic period dating from 7000 B.C.

This makes some of these painting a massive 9000 years old!

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