Tuesday, July 17

Tuesday, July 17: Fillmore to Mt. Timpanogos, Salt Lake City, and Logan, Utah           

Mt. Timpanogos

We set out from Fillmore on I-15 at 9:30 am, with a destination of Logan, UT for the night, but an urge to go off the prescribed route to explore something identified on the map as Timpanogos Cave National Monument, up in the hills northeast of Provo. It wasn’t in the hills at all, but way up in some serious mountains. As we climbed up US 189 toward  Heber City, we spotted the sign for the turnoff just in time and made a left onto a narrow winding road that climbed and climbed. We passed Sundance Resort (no sign of Robert Redford), and climbed and climbed and climbed. Priscilla the Prius did nobly (we had shut off Carmen the Garmin to keep her from being upset at our deviation from the road to Logan). After about 25  miles of threading numerous switchbacks we finally reached a pass and started down (no caves in sight). Though we were at 8,000 ft. by now, Mt. Timp (the locals call it) loomed high above us still, at 11,750 feet. There were snowfields here and there on its steep slopes, not much higher up than we were.

A mountain biker pulled into the trailhead where we had turned off the road to catch our breath to unload his bike as we were wondering whatever happened to the cave. He assured us it lay ahead, but if we wanted to see it, there was a 3-hour wait for a tour. This soured us considerably on caving, and when we finally reached the cave site any remaining enthusiasm was gone. Dozens of cars jammed the parking area, with hundreds of would-be explorers waiting in line. We drove on. It had been a two-hour detour, but with fabulous mountain scenery all the way.

The Mormon Temple

Then we traded one spiritual experience for a decidedly different kind, as we turned off the highway once more to visit the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. It was something else. We were not allowed to enter the Temple or the Tabernacle, but did take a brief tour of the visitors’ center. An amazing sight. On the main floor was a large tabletop model of Jerusalem as imagined in 33 AD, with panels where you could push buttons to light up the supposed sites of numerous events in Jesus’ life. On the floor below were life-sized dioramas of Old and New Testament scenes. Patriarchs did pious things.  Ethereal music played from hidden loudspeakers. Earnest young people with name tags, often with flags of their nationalities (Cao from China, Annette from Australia, for instance) attached, were conducting tours and answering questions right and left. 

The Prophet Isaiah

We had mixed feelings about it all. On the one hand we were appalled by the lavish expenditure of money (all those LDS tithes) on such opulent, garish displays. On the other, here were all these devout people wandering about with smiles on their faces, many of them from far away on a pilgrimage of sorts, coming at last to visit the holiest of their shrines, which many of them may have waited half their lives to see (and had gladly chipped in their10% to help pay for). They needed the opulence, and the many displays of the religious events they had heard preached to them, to feel fulfilled. Two skeptical heretics from Gloucester were lost in the crowd.

Jerusalem, 33 AD

Incidentally, on the car parked in front of us on West Temple street was only the second Romney sticker we had seen on our entire trip (and we had seen only one Obama-Biden 2012 sticker, though Obama 2008 stickers were on almost every Prius we’ve encountered in more than two weeks. Should we conclude that voters in both parties are apathetic this year? And that Republicans don’t drive Priuses)?  

We missed two Utah landmarks we might have wanted to see: One was the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, west of Cedar City, where Mormons, disguised as Paiute Indians and possibly acting under the direct orders of Brigham Young, massacred 140 emigrant pioneers in 1857 (you can read all about it in Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven; there’s a monument there now, maintained by the LDS. 

The other was the “Spiral Jetty,” a coil 15 feet wide and 1,500 feet long, created out of mud and rock and extending out from the shore into the Great Salt Lake. It was built during a period of drought by Robert Smithson in 1970, but the runoff from melting snows each year has generally kept it invisible, totally submerged. Too bad.


We drove on, arriving at the Comfort Inn in Logan at 4:30, tired but edified.