Digital Journal: Spiral Jetty Trip

The report from the March 4, 2006 Spiral Jetty trip.

The night before, Bryan and I drove down to Damion's place while Andra was babysitting to partake in excess pizza, and to swap cars. We were in NEED of a vehicle with 4X4 capabilities. On our way back, we hit up the McEntire's place for sleeping bags, tent, and chairs, then to the store for Mt. Dew, cookies, etc. Finally we made a stop in a Trevor's work to load up the Explorer with about a hundred pounds of wood pallets. The next day after dragging people out of bed at noon, we were off! Me, Bryan, and Greg listened to a vast spectrum of music in our travels with enraged and reckless Utah drivers. We pulled off on the Golden Spike monument exit, and eventually made it to the visitor's center where we met up with Trevor, Brandy, and yes. Cliff. Daniel and Jay were about an hour or more behind, so we figured that they'd probably just meet us at the jetty. There we piled in to the red explorer, and journeyed into the dirt and rocky roads. For the first 10 or more miles, the road was fine, and suitable for my old Sentra. Most of the road wasn't too bad except for the occasional dodging of a cow or pothole. However, later it was a NECESSITY for us to engage the 4X4 and have a good amount of clearance to get around large jagged rocks in the road. It was quite the adventure. Finally we arrived to the jetty, and someone in a Subaru was there already, but up playing in the rocks above. We descended to the jetty and found that there was a layer of a salt foam along the shore, and along the jetty. It almost looked like ice floating, but it moved rather eerie like, and just looked plain weird and hypnotic. The lake level had increased from Trevor's last trip, and it was a bit more difficult navigating along the jetty without getting one's shoes salty, and wet. The foam that coated the top layer of some of the water had gotten dusty in places, and looked just like solid ground in parts, and one needed to only trust solid rocks for foot placement. Even Cliff found this out the hard way after trusting the foam surface as ground. Wet cat Our group explored along the jetty snapping pics here and there. A few decided that the careful navigation was fruitless, so they just walked in the ankle/shin deep water. After getting our fill, we headed back to the rocks where Cliff was happy to be away from the water, where she chased jackrabbits and birds. We then moved down the road some to the old oil drilling site. We found a large buoy or orb of some kind, which I joked to be another lost prototype of the first atomic bomb. In a weird way the abandoned desolation was rather scenic. Daniel and Jay arrived in their pickup, and headed down to the jetty at this time, and we met up later. After getting cell reception again, I called Andra who had just arrived at the Crystal Hot Springs. About a half hour later we all arrived at the springs in need of some lounging time. This trip was better than the last due to the lack of hoards of boy scouts. We all had fun on the waterslides, and in the steaming hot salty pools. We stayed until 15 min from closing, before the tsunami of people getting out, and departed to our campsite. Interestingly enough, with an entire campground empty, the only people we saw there, were occupying our reserved campsite! So, we figured we'd just find another site (even though that one was the best) to host our Prometheus worshiping festivities. All the dry pallet wood took fire rapidly, and soon we had a roaring inferno. Daniel and Jay pulled out large coals to cook their foil meals, and help cooked our chili on the side. We feasted on Tim's Cascade Jalapeo chips and Mt. Dew once again, as well as gummy bears, and cookies. Mmmm delicious health food. Towards the end of our fire, we decided that camping didn't really seem all that appealing at the time with setting up our tent in the cold darkness, just to have to pack it up again in the morning. So we threw on all the rest of the pallets for our true Whiteman fire, and for our own twisted sense of amusement, arranged an array of sacrificial gummy bears on a wood plank. We packed up, Andra and Bryan swapped cars again, and we were off back to our place a bit before 1am.