Blog

Helper – Part 1

This is why I love Helper; view from the motel :-)

I'm in Colorado now, but first I'll write about Helper. We spent three nights here, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Our motel is just off the highway, US-6, nestled between the Price River and the ex D&RGW railroad mainline. We arrived here and had a little trouble finding the owner, but once we found him he was pretty helpful. He put us in the corner room, which though rough was good enough. The pillows were a little tired looking so we used our own. But we had a kitchen, a fridge, toilet, shower, TV, and a bed, obviously. I could only get internet if I put my laptop on the TV, which was a bit annoying. The next morning I talked to Mark, the owner, and it was absolutely no problem at all to move us. Our new room was really nice; we had a little couch, a dining table, a microwave, a radio/kitchen light (handy), and so on. Best of all, I could sit outside the room and watch the trains go by.

Huntsville to Helper

After camping the night in Huntsville, we woke up early and gave the car a good clean out before heading off for our next adventure. We decided to steer clear of SLC and it's insane freeway system, and instead stick to the back roads (which are still miles better than any NZ highway). We drove from Huntsville to Mountain Green, where we followed the old highway for a bit. Then I spied a train overtaking us and suddenly my passionate hatred of the Interstate system evaporated and in a few moments we were whizzing along the I80 towards Echo, paralleling the trains. We'd soon overtaken mr train (a unit coal train) but then I spied another in the distance and soon enough a double-stacker (containers stacked two-high on well deck container wagons) whizzed by. I snapped off a few shots where I could of my coal train. It was a fair length with a Union Pacific and Southern Pacific loco on the front, and the same combination on the rear in DPU mode (distributed power mode, i.e. remote contr...

Goodbye Salt Lake, hello Ogden

We woke bright and early on the 10th (not hard with UTA's damn noisy busses roaring past our heads!) and were soon on our way to Ogden. Why Ogden? Well there is a certain museum there that made it worthwhile fighting the interstate to get there. Almost saw one accident happen next to me when the car braked suddenly and the following car starting fishtailing as it tried to brake too.

Anyway the museum had something a little bit special for me…

This, ladies and gentlemen, is D&RGW 5371, the last tunnel motor in the original RIo Grande colour scheme. So..? Well the Rio Grande is my favourite of the American railroads, for a number of reasons. 1) Their slogan was "the action road " and when it came to crossing the Rockies or Sierras, their philosophy was to chuck more locos on the front, mid, and rear of the train until it started moving. So 15 locos on one train was common. And fifteen locos slogging their guts out up ...

Central Salt Lake City

The first thing anyone thinks of when they hear "Salt Lake City" is of course Mormons and/or their temple. So I felt it was only right we go visit it. Luckily there was a free shuttle from our campground to Temple Square so we took that. I was worried the tours would cost money, but everything was free there… soon became clear why.

The shuttle bus is run by the church, and when we arrived they showed us the way to our tour guides, who were also of the Mormon church. The guides were all females, 21-24 years old, and always in pairs. Turns out this is part of their "mission" work. The young males go off to distant places to door knock, and the females, it appears, are turned into tour guides.

We were given a fairly quick tour of their extensive campus. One of the people in our group was determined to pick a fight with them and had done his homework on every little flaw in their religion (which honestly isn't hard…) but came across as a bit of a rude prat...

Salt Lake City Fish

On a whim we decided to check out the Salt Lake City Aquarium, in Sandy. My GPS too us straight there, even if I did try and out smart it by avoiding a few left hand turns (read: the tricky turns when you drive on wrong side of road, and have to cross 4 lanes of traffic!). We arrived there soon enough, and you'll have to forgive me if I was a bit sceptical. The building looked like a giant blue warehouse surrounded by parking lots, and there was a school bus there too. But for $8 each… why not.

All fears were gone as soon as we entered the aquarium; it is really, really well done. Beats SF hands down in many areas. The exhibits are well thought out, with informative but concise (and quite stylish) info panels. The tanks are more like little windows into other worlds. The electric eel has a zap-o-meter above it, which lights up from green to red as it hunts for food, depending on whether it's search-shocking or stun-shocking.

And the exhibits… wow! The ...