Wyoming? Just becuase.

Currently Gusser's and I are still in Layton UT. But if you were to look for us in Layton, let's say... tomorrow? You would find NO TRACE OF US. Like smoke-pellet throwing ninja's, we'll be absolutely GONE from not only the town of Layton, but Davis County, and in fact the entire state of Utah! Screw it! We're heading for Wyoming!
That's not to say we haven't enjoyed our time here. We went camping at the North Fork Campground last weekend (in the Wasatch Mountains), and it was fantastic. Zero pictures were taken, which as time goes on will only allow the memories to ferment, and grow stronger. Bolder. It was like a beer commercial; our site had a mountain fed stream which kept our water and beer ice cold, we had waterfall-laden hiking, and we had roaring camp-fires. And almost no bugs, which was cool.
But I'm reminiscing. Tomorrow we head to Wyoming, which Gussie and I have never ever been to. Do they wear cowboy hats there? Do they eat with their feet? Who knows. Probably no one. We'll find out tomorrow, and you'll find out next week!

Action Packed Weekend

Gusser's and I witnessed several disturbing events this weekend; as my personal anti-favorite I'll pick on man's closest genetic relative - the monkey. We went to the Hogle Zoo and saw a lot of animals doing animal stuff. Giraffe's using their silly purple tongues to get hay (or something) out of troughs, black bears shadow boxing each other, and a white-alligator just sitting around like it's dead (which is what every alligator I've ever seen in my life has been doing - just sitting there waiting for a baby to stroll by then BAM!). But then we saw a Mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx) doing something not as much funny as it was absolutely disgusting. And you guessed it; it involved poop.
Do I even need to say more? When people think monkeys, their very next thought often includes "poop". Like, "Uh-oh, is there any poop flying through the air?" or "Is that poop I smell?". Now I think that this is because humans are genetically wired to fear poop-tossing monkeys. Luckily for Gussie and I, this Mandrill was behind a thick pane of glass. But that also meant that we had a unobstructed view of this particular Mandrill, who appeared to be attempting to write a message in his own feces. Then, almost as an afterthought chose to... I can't say it. It was gross though, real gross. We walked away and focused our attention on the 3-toed sloth, who was peacefully sleeping in a sling. Much cooler.

Seamonkey Lake City

Okay, we all know that the United States if full of mysteries. Sometimes you'll do some traveling, and those mysterious aren't so mysterious any more. You're all like, "Ooooh, I get it. That's how they make paper!" or "So that's where babies come from!" and you're a better informed, more well-rounded individual. But sometimes, you learn something, and it makes you wish you were born with no brain...
As happened to Gussie and myself this week. As we're staying about 20 minutes away from the "great" salt lake, we figures we would go and check out this sweet island that they've turned into a sweet state park. There's a road extending from the lake's edge to the island itself, and after paying the crazy-high fee to get in, we were hit my a magnificent sight; the lake's humongous, and the water is very still... the mountains are cleanly reflected in the lake, and where the lake meets the sky on the horizon, you can't see where one stops and the other begins. In short, it's a magnificent sight to behold... and then the smell hits you. "Oooh Lord, what is that stink?" we asked ourselves, only slightly distracted from the view. The offending odor soon faded, and we happily made our way to the visitor center. It was there that the horrific learning took place. But before the horrific learning was some normal learning. Turns out that the reason the greater Salt Lake City area is constantly pestered by Seagulls (feel free to take a moment to look at a map of where Salt Lake City is as compared to any ocean or sea - the nearest as far as I can tell is about 590 miles away in the LA area) is that a huge percentage of the US bird population hangs out at the "great" salt lake on their trip's north and south every year. "Why do they do that?" I wondered. "Isn't it all salty? They don't have fish in there, do they?" Well it turns out that no, they don't. What they do have, what does grow in the lake, is sea monkeys. God awful amounts of sea monkeys. And when Gussie and I kicked off our shoes and approached the surface of the water, we had to step over hundreds of thousands of washed up and stinking sea monkeys. And when we did wade into the water, we were abruptly stopped by a reddish, rolling and impenetrable mass of disgusting, exposed-ribcage-looking sea monkeys. So that's what the stink on our drive in was; a billion dead sea monkeys. I... I can't write any more right now...*sniff*... more next week...

Spring camping

I grew up in Illinois, and I'm no spring chicken. I have no right to be surprised by what the weather happens to be doing within the confines of my home state. So while I'm not exactly shocked by the amount of rain and lightening I've seen since returning to Illinois on May 24th, I'm certainly impressed.
Now I may have been influenced by the fact that since returning home, every night there has been a thunderstorm Gussie and I weren't sleeping in a "fortified environment" or "house". We were tent camping the first weekend back, and this most recent week we were staying in my folks RV. This has highlighted for me a very important principle of camping in the spring; take an RV. See, on two occasions this year we've been tent camping and found ourselves nearly floating away! In this most recent go-round, we could actually press down on the floor of the tent and displace inches of water! Inches I tell you, not centimeters but inches! It was amazing.
Gusser's is already in Salt Lake, and described a stormy land with snow-capped mountains. I'm looking forward to it, but sad that I'll be leaving behind the humidity and heat of Illinois. But what the hell are you going to do? The high desert is calling.