I was on a schedule to get back to Las Vegas by a certain date to make sure I was there in time to attend an in-person class for one of my continuing ed­u­ca­tion certifications, so I didn’t quite get to spend as much time in Utah as I wanted to. On top of that, I got snowed in for a few days, and also had a few busy days of work at Tempo, so it felt like my stay was a bit shorter than it actually was. Because I had a disproportionately low number of Utah posts, I de­cided to put together a state round-up like I sometimes do.

 
I like to break up my drive as much as possible, so as long as there is a convenient hotel along the way, I’ll try to avoid driving more than a few hours at a time. On my way from Twin Falls to Salt Lake City, I decided to spend a night in Ogden, about an hour or so north of my next destination in the eastern suburbs of Salt Lake City.

After resting up for the night, I finished my way down to the Courtyard by Marriott Salt Lake City Cottonwood in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

I haven’t been posting hotel room photos as much anymore because I consistently stay in the same franchised brands and all the rooms look very similar, but I figured it’s been long enough that I’d share again what the newer Courtyards look like, and what my temporary “home” in the Salt Lake City met­ro­pol­i­tan area was like.

Earlier this year when I was traveling through Colorado, I encountered some snow but refused to buy a snow brush because I knew that, with my luck, I would only use it once, then it would stop snowing and I would never have to use it again. This proved troublesome, because it snowed quite a bit, so I ended up having to come up with some very creative solutions to remove the snow from my pickup truck every time I needed to drive it somewhere. Still, I remained headstrong, because I knew that the day I bought a snow brush would be the day it stopped snowing for the year.

If I had known that I was staying so long in the Seattle Metropolitan Area and would be headed back down through Idaho and Utah during the late fall, I would’ve bought a snow brush back in March with the assumption that I would be using it in November. However, I didn’t think that far ahead, so I end­ed up just never purchasing a snow brush.

After seeing snow in the Idaho weather forecast, I didn’t want a repeat of what happened in Colorado, so I immediately bought the largest and most expensive snow brush with the most features I could possibly find after arriving in Idaho. That was a wise decision, because the following day, I used my snow brush.

And that’s it. The curse came through. I never had to use my snow brush again after the very first time. Yes, it snowed a lot in Utah, but when it did, I was parked in an underground parking structure. On days when I was at hotels where there was only surface lot parking, it never snowed.

Now I just have an egregiously high-tech snow brush sitting idly in the back seat footwell of my truck.

Never lucky.

Regardless, the view from my hotel room of the snowy mountains were awesome. Here are three different shots from three different days with varying time proximity to the snowstorm and varying amounts of sunlight.

I was actually very surprised at how many electric pickup trucks were in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area—I saw more Rivian R1Ts during my week and a half here than I had seen anywhere else, combined and tripled. I guess that makes sense then that my very first time ever seeing a GMC Hummer EV pickup truck was also here, in the parking lot of my hotel.

I pretty much almost never post photographs of vehicles that are not my own, but I figured I had to post this one because of how much I like the Hum­mer EV, as well as the fact that this had an amazing matte dark red wrap on it, which is probably the exact same color I would pick if I wanted to get my own vehicle wrapped.

I’m not the biggest fan of the bed design of the Hummer EV, because I like the upright blockier style (like my personal pickup truck, a 2018 GMC Can­yon) more than the smoother angle of the C pillar on the Hummer EV, but the overall technology, innovation, functionality, and luxury of the Hum­mer EV immediately made it my favorite new electric pickup truck reveal when it first came out.

On my way back to Las Vegas, I decided to spend a night in St. George, Utah so I wouldn’t be driving for too long in a single day.

Because of my elite status with the Marriott Bonvoy program, I get to pick rewards each qualifying year via the Annual Choice Benefit. Most travel an­a­lysts say that the suite night awards are highest in value, so I always end up picking them. Unfortunately, because I generally stay at select-tier hotels, the suite night awards aren’t as meaningful to me because there usually aren’t very many suites even available at all on the property, and if there are, they’re not that much better in quality than a regular guest room, apart from just being a bit bigger in square footage.

Suite night awards via the Annual Choice Benefit expire in one year, and I have a bunch expiring on December 31, 2022, so in St. George, I decided to stay at a nicer hotel where I could use the suite night upgrade and actually get a big upgrade—the Advenire Hotel, part of the Autograph Collection.

One reason why I avoid nicer hotels, though, is that it actually gets pretty inconvenient. Fairfield Inns, SpringHill Suites, and Residence Inns generally have straightforward building structures, parking is almost always free, and there are multiple entrances for quick access to the interior. However, the fancier you go in hotels, the more inconveniences arise.

For example, at the Advenire, parking was valet-only for US$18.00 per night. If I didn’t want to use valet, I had to either street park or use a structure on the other side of the street. I’ve had way too many bad experiences with valet parking service, and I just don’t like the idea of having valet touch my ve­hi­cle at all to begin with, so I unloaded my stuff at the front and went searching for this off-site parking garage.

Of course, I took the wrong turn three times, proceeded to drive in circles around the wrong city blocks, had to take detours because of streets closed for construction, and the entire time regretted not just staying at a Courtyard or SpringHill Suites only 2-4 miles away.

By around this time last year, I was pretty set on Colorado being my favorite state, and Utah being second. After visiting Montana, those two states got bumped down to #2 and #3, but the sequence of them remained the same.

I think my last visit to Salt Lake City wasn’t very fair, not only because I picked an older, not-so-well-maintained, past-generation Fairfield Inn, but also be­cause I had the broken glasses fiasco that ate up a lot of my time.

After having driven through Utah again at the beginning of this year, and then again recently, I think Utah has caught up to, or maybe even surpassed, Colorado in the ranking. I still think Colorado is amazing, but Utah has more variety to it, while Colorado seems to stick to a “theme.”

If I’m able to stick around in Las Vegas like I want to when I pick a long-term residence again, that would be good news for the sake of visiting Utah a­gain, considering that it is right next door and on the way to anything towards the east.

While browsing through tourist activities to do while in Salt Lake City, I came across the Red Butte Garden, a botanical garden. I found it earlier on dur­ing my stay, but I noticed that there is a 50% discount on admissions starting from December 1, so I waited until the first of the month to visit. Ad­mis­sion ended up being only US$7.00.

I’m glad I got the discount, because this was less of a botanical garden and more of just a leisurely walk in a premium park. That’s completely reasonable and understandable, though, because my visit happened not very long after a series of snowstorms, so it makes sense that the flowers won’t be in bloom.

There were a lot of winding paths, so I sort of just wandered around without truly knowing where I was going. Starting from the visitor center, I believe I went through the Courtyard Garden, possibly the Four Seasons Garden, towards the Children’s Garden, and ended up in the Water Conservation Gar­den.

As I went up the switchbacks northeast of the Water Conservation Garden, I climbed in elevation and made it up to the Prospect Point Terrace. From here, I was able to get some nice views of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area.

From the top, I looked towards the southeast towards the natural area access points and Seepy Hollow for a nice view of snow-covered mountains.

After making my way down, I meandered around the Fragrance Garde, Medicinal Garden, and Herb Garden. As you can probably tell from the photos, it was a little bit difficult to tell them apart.

I saw from the map that there was a body of water nearby, so I started walking towards the Red Butte Creek and passed a few waysides.

On the way there, I also saw a statue of a moose.

The stream had a light trickle, but the pond was completely frozen over. On one triangularly opposite side of the pond was the Water Pavilion and the Wa­ter Pavilion Garden; on the other triangularly opposite side of the pond was a small waterfall that also only had a light trickle, and fed into another different frozen pond.

I continued on the walking path on the northwestern side along Red Butte Canyon Road and approached the terrace, amphitheater, and stage.

After going around the loop and past the concert and special event entrances, I walked through a relatively dead Rose Garden and Floral Walk. I did end up finding one bright and blossomed flower, but I think this might have just been a special thing by the Orangerie and not actually part of the Floral Walk.

It appeared like I was one of the only people weird enough to go to a botanical garden days after a snowstorm, so the parking lot was pretty empty and made for a good photo opportunity for my trusty truck with a nice backdrop.

If I had known that the Red Butte Skyline Nature Trail was nearby, I would’ve arrived earlier, worn snakers, and gone for a longer hike, but I ended up just exploring the main Red Butte Garden area and returning to my hotel so I could make it back in time to attend a conference call.

Overall, my stroll around the property was a little shy of 2 miles (almost exactly 3 kilometers).

I obviously can’t make a proper recommendation on whether or not I think you should visit the Red Butte Garden based solely on my own experience, considering that I clearly missed out on a big part of the “garden” aspect of the garden due to my off-season visit, but it was a still decent reason for me to go out into nature and get some fresh air, and I don’t regret going.

After traveling across the United States and a portion of Canada for about a year and a half now, it feels like I’ve seen most of what there is to see.

When I go to a new city, I like to go to something that the city is known for (like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, or the Kentucky Derby Mu­se­um in Louisville), but some areas don’t really have anything that iconic. Yes, most places will have some sort of regional history museum, but it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly going to be something with nationwide prestige.

Alternatively, I try to look for specialty museums—museums that might not be tied to a specific place, but are so unique and one-of-a-kind that I likely won’t see a variant of it again anywhere else.

While visiting Salt Lake City, Utah, I found a great example of something exactly like that: the Land Cruiser Heritage Museum, a museum dedicated to Toyota Land Cruisers and other related Toyota vehicles.

This museum had multiple rows of Land Cruiser trucks and SUVs ranging from models from 1953 all the way to 2021. Beside each vehicle was a very thor­ough description that provided specifications, gave a summary of the general model, and shared a history of that particular vehicle (i.e., what it did dur­ing its lifetime and how it ended up at the museum).

Many of the Land Cruisers had modifications for functionality. One of my favorite things about pickup trucks and body-on-frame SUVs is their easy mod­ability and how owners can change specific parts to their liking to serve their own unique and personalized purpose. It’s fun looking at various up­grades and making the connection of how it was relevant to the vehicle’s story.

These dark baby blue and white Land Cruisers were FJ models. If I remember correctly, the one on the right was used as a tow truck.

As I looped around one row of Land Cruisers, I turned around the bend and looked down two more parallel rows of even more Land Cruisers.

Apparently this monster truck version of a Land Cruiser was for sale.

Here are some more FJ models, these from the “Adventure” section. The one thing I remember from this section was that, I’m not sure why, but one of these vehicles had never been used and was straight out of the factory. This meant that a dealership didn’t even have the opportunity yet to remove any of the protective plastic and prepare it for sale. You see the protective plastic film on electronics all the time, but it was very unexpected to see it on the outside of a motor vehicle.

Of course, a Land Cruiser collection wouldn’t be complete without the latest 2021 model. For those who don’t keep up with trucks and SUVs, Toyota de­cid­ed to discontinue the Land Cruiser, so this will be the last model made. I’m curious how this museum is going to react to that—whether they will start bringing in some Sequoias instead, or just focus purely on historical models.

This is a Mega Cruiser from the 1990s designed to be a military vehicle. It is extremely boxy, so it looks unmanageably gigantic. Funny enough, though, I checked the specifications on the info placard and discovered from the dimensions that the width of this Mega Cruiser is actually narrower than the Ram TRX and Ford F-150 Raptor.

This reminded me of when Tesla first unveiled the Cybertruck and people thought it was massive… without realizing that the published dimensions made it nearly identical in size to a traditional full-size pickup truck like a Ford F-150 or Chevrolet Silverardo. This goes to show how much body lines and other aesthetic factors have a play in a vehicle’s perceived size.

This is clearly a Toyota Hilux and not a Land Cruiser, but the reason it was included in this museum, and the reason I included it in my blog post, is due to its incredible story. This Hilux was part of the “Arctic Trucks” collection and served on some of the harshest expeditions across Antarctica and Green­land.

There was a lot of information posted about these expedition vehicles, and reading through all of them made me gain a lot of respect for the people who decide to conquer the most remote areas of the planet in a small group, and along the way, demonstrating great self-reliance by overcoming catastrophic levels of vehicular damage inflicted by unexpected obstacles.

I took a picture of this vehicle because I found it funny that it arrived at the museum with all its Middle Eastern dirt and dust intact. You can see where people had touched it, which I imagine is what prompted the museum to further place an additional sign reminding people not to touch it.

This charred FJ Land Cruiser had my favorite story behind it, albeit a sad one. Owned by a former Butte County sheriff, this Land Cruiser was engulfed in flames during the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California—a fire that I specifically remember hearing and reading about as it was happening four years ago. It is the most destructive Californian wildfire to date, and it took about three weeks for the fire to be fully contained.

This Land Cruiser sits in the museum to remind us of the fragility of life, the speed at which things can be abruptly taken from us, and the importance of cherishing and appreciating the people and belongings we love.

It was difficult to get any interior shots because of how the museum was organized and how cramped the vehicles were placed alongside each other (which was sort of a necessity due to the vast quantity of vehicles on display and the limited space in the building), but I was able to peek into some of the Land Cruisers that were on the corner edges by the aisles.

Of course, being a pickup truck fan, I had to post at least one photo of a pickup truck—this is a Bandeirante concept prototype that ultimately became the FJ Cruiser.

On the theme of the off-road potential of Land Cruisers, the museum had a very intricate and detailed topographical map of the state of Utah on display on one of the walls. I thought it was extremely well-built, so I snapped a photo of the southwest corner of Utah near St. George, my next destination after Salt Lake City.

If you don’t care at all about cars, this is absolutely not the museum for you. Admission was US$18.00, and someone who is not actually interested in Land Cruisers will probably stroll through in 20 minutes or less, and it won’t be worth the price to get in.

However, if you are a fan of trucks, SUVs, and/or off-roading, this museum is probably going to be a dream come true for you. I personally spent a few hours slowly going through every vehicle, reading almost every single vehicle’s story, and revisiting some aisles twice. There were also some videos play­ing in the ad­ven­ture section, and I stuck around watching decent portions of them to see the brutal expeditions that the trucks sitting directly in front of me had been on.

And there above is the final shot I took down the center of the museum from the entrance/exit.

I’m not really sure where this museum gets the funding to be able to afford all these Land Cruisers and cover the upkeep and maintenance for the fa­cil­i­ty, but I sure hope they can keep it going, because this was definitely a one-of-a-kind experience.