This post is a bit delayed because of my broken eyeglass situation, but I’m finally a functioning human being again, and that’s what matters.

The trip up north from St. George to Salt Lake City was fairly smooth; I drove for about two hours, took a lunch break at Fillmore, then fin­ished the re­maining two hours to the Fairfield Inn & Suites Salt Lake City Airport.

As of today, I’ve been to 26 states and have personally driven in 20 of them. Out of all those states, I would say that Utah by far has the best drivers by a no­tice­a­ble margin. I think this might be attributed to the fact that Utah is the only state that has abundant signage educating drivers about various po­ten­tial road situations.

A few of the ones I saw on my drive up were:

• “No vehicles with trailers in left lane” and “No vehicles over 12,000 GVW in left lane,” to keep slow vehicles out of the passing lane
• “Drowsy drivers take next exit in ___ miles,” because driving fatigued is basically just as bad as driving drunk
• “Do not cross double white lines,” to stop people from swerving in and out of the HOV lane
• “Legal to exit HOV when emergency vehicle present,” for the idiots who then proceed to never leave the HOV lane because they just saw a sign that told them not to cross double white lines, and thus impede emergency vehicles
• “Fender bender take next exit and call 911,” to stop people from pulling over right on the side of the highway and causing rubbernecking traffic and putting their own selves in physical danger
• “Fines up to $1000 for unsecured loads” and “Fines up to $500 for littering,” to remind people that there are actually punishments for this stuff

On the other hand, California by far has the worst drivers by an even greater noticeable margin, and could definitely use these kinds of road signs. Hi­lar­i­ous­ly, the only vehicles I’ve seen so far breaking traffic laws in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area are cars with California license plates.

 
Apart from my broken glasses incident, my stay in Salt Lake City has been fairly uneventful. I like to avoid going places over the weekends because I don’t like when it’s too busy, and it tends to be a lot busier everywhere on the weekends. So, I usually stay indoors on Saturdays and Sundays and catch up on work.

Now that it’s Wednesday and I can actually see where I’m going, I took my first leisurely trip outside earlier today and hiked up to Ensign Peak. It was a very short but fairly steep hike; apparently it’s only about one mile round-trip, but my fitness tracker says I climbed about 41 stories during the hike up. I picked this spot as my first nature destination because it was a great location to see the Salt Lake City metropolitan area with vast, sweeping views.

After arriving in Utah yesterday, I went to sleep early because I didn’t want St. George to be a repeat of Lake Las Vegas. I woke up at 6 AM this morning to head out on an adventure before the temperature rose above triple digits again.

My first stop was the Red Hills Desert Garden.

Right afterwards, I looped around up north deeper into Pioneer Park and hiked up some of the rocks.

I also made it up to the Pioneer Park Arch.

After descending from the rocks, I went into the St. George Narrows, a very small opening between two very large rock formations.

And finally, I finished my loop around Pioneer Park and headed over to the Dixie Sugarloaf and Red Hills Parkway Trail.

After having hiked some of the easier trails in Red Rock Canyon and Mount Charleston, I think Pioneer Park was mild enough that it doesn’t quite even count as a real hike. Regardless, it was a nice walk through nature to see some of southern Utah before heading up to Salt Lake City tomorrow.