Glacier – Part 6

Day 9

*As a note, we are not in Glacier anymore, but since I’ve been using that title, I’m going to stick with it.*

I almost forgot a very important thing that happened in Bigfork.  In Bigfork, we swapped Guzzler the Jeep for Sipper the Prius.  Despite our initial concern, we fit ourselves and all of our belongings into the Prius, and it was only a bit tighter than we had been in the Jeep.  With over three times the fuel economy!

After a somewhat leasurely morning, packing the car, and stopping in the village of Bigfork for lunch and some delicious local cherries, we finally hit the road south.  We were just out of Bigfork, with me behind the wheel, when the following occurred:

“Shit!” [Braking and swerving.]  “I just about killed Bambi — in their brand new Prius!”

Fortunately, Bambi was booking it and my driving maneuvers were successful, so we avoided that little tragedy.

We drove out of Montana with spot showers along the way.  I forbid it to rain anymore once we crossed into Idaho.  Like a child testing just how far she can push her parents’ rules, the skies did produce a few more showers, but things were nice and dry by the time we reached our campsite at Downata Springs.  We got in very late, having passed up our originally planned stop in Idaho Falls due to the fact that the campground was located squarely in the middle of an industrial area and had plenty of interstate noise.

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Day 10

In the morning, we searched for the hot springs at our campsite, but found none.  Thwarted in that little quest, we packed up and drove to Salt Lake City for a foodstravaganza.

My husband’s memory can be interesting.  He has a terrible time with names, and often also has issues with remembering things on the calendar.  However, after visiting a Salt Lake chocolatier one or two times when he was in Salt Lake FIVE YEARS ago, he managed to get us within two blocks of the place from memory, where we pulled over and asked a resident if there was a chocolate shop nearby (Matthew didn’t remember the NAME of the shop).  Thanks to his food oriented memory, we found Hatch Family Chocolates, where we enjoyed a pre-lunch frozen hot chocolate and picked up some chocolate for the road.  We already know we will have to go back sometime to try their hot hot chocolate, which was apparently inspired by Matthew.  The owners remembered him, and making a special hot chocolate for him, from five years ago!

Next up was lunch at Sawadee Thai.  This was not the Thai restaurant my husband remembered enjoying in Salt Lake (again with the food memory), but it was very highly reviewed, and it lived up to those reviews.

Next, we hit up an Italian grocery where we didn’t buy anything because the balsamic vinegar that he remembered as being so good and wanted to stock up on did not impress this time around.  However, we made up for it with pastry purchases at the Italian bakery next door.

Finally, we stopped at a street corner farm stand and bought some locally grown peaches and tomatoes.  Mission(s) complete, we rolled out of SLC and on toward Moab.  We found a campsite in Moab that was, in many ways, the nicest place we had camped yet, except for the road noise that resulted from its location at the edge of town where there was a hill in the highway right where the speed limit increased.  I liked the campground enough that we stayed there all three nights in Moab, sleeping with earplugs in to cut down on the noise.

No, it is not normal to have green grass in the desert.  This was only accomplished through dedicated watering on the owner’s part.  Due to the water input, growing grass in the desert really is not “green,” but the rabbits thought it was the best thing since sliced bread!