Due to my broken eyeglass incident (which, by the way, has an update now that I edited in yesterday), I feel like four out of the six and a half days I had in Salt Lake City were robbed from me—the first day when my glasses snapped in half at the bridge, the second day when I drove around to a repair shop and eyeglass store trying to figure out how to resolve the situation, the following day when I tried to get accustomed to my new glasses and failed hard, and yesterday when my glasses snapped in half at the leg.

With that being said, I think I still hit the two most important places that I wanted to visit in Salt Lake City—Ensign Peak, where I was able to get sweep­ing views of the entire metropolitan area, and Great Salt Lake, the body of water after which Salt Lake City is named.

I went to Great Salt Lake by means of the Great Salt Lake State Park, southwest of the Great Saltair; admission was $5. The park had an observation deck with a good lookout spot of the lake and beach.

There was also a beach access spot, so I went down to the sand… which was a questionable decision. I imagine it’s because of the high salt content in the lake, but there was an absolute insane amount of bugs on Silver Sands Beach. In the photograph below, you’ll see some gray stuff floating along the shore­line, as well as on the green sand. … Those are all bugs.

There were some areas of cleaner sand, but the entire area smelled terrible, presumably because of the bugs. I walked close to the water and got swarmed by bugs, and they followed me a good couple hundred feet back to the park.

There was another nice lookout point at the edge of the park that overlooked the opening for boats to sail off from the marina into the lake. The area looked like it was closed down, so not many people went over there, but it seemed like the blockade was only to stop vehicles from passing through that area. I went around the barrier and walked all the way down onto the rocks.

On my way back, I snapped a photo of the marina.

And behind the Great Salt Lake State Park, the Oquirrh Mountains served as a nice backdrop.

I don’t get too grossed out by anything, so I was fine walking around Silver Sands Beach, but it was quite frankly hilarious watching some of the other tour­ists go down there and freak out at the smell and bugs.

I’ve stared into the vast nothingness of the Pacific Ocean at astronomical twilight from a high point at the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles, so star­ing into the Great Salt Lake wasn’t anything too life-changing, but I definitely enjoyed the experience.

Today is my final full day in Utah; tomorrow, I set off for Wyoming.