Nathan posted on July 11, 2010 12:02
Last night’s sleep was perfect—it made up for several nights previous of not-quite-enough sleep. We had a wonderful breakfast, packed up, and were on our way by 8:15. The road out of our big long canyon (Dragon’s Wash, as you will recall) was much easier from that point on, and we were soon driving flat Utah landscapes.
When we reached signs for another canyon, and saw that Sam had put on the maps a bypass due to difficult road conditions, we mentioned to Carl that he might take the bypass. No more crunched running boards. NH showed him the directions that were on the map for taking the interstate, taking exit 105, and finding a road to drive about five miles, at which point he would intersect with us. Carl turned around, and we ventured into the canyon.
I think it was called Cat Canyon, and it was some of the most fun driving yet. We followed the dry riverbed again, but this one was almost all sand and maintained dirt road, not river rocks. We careened around nicely banked corners and a few exciting switchbacks, and generally loved the canyon. We thought the entire time what a shame it was that Carl had taken the bypass—if any canyon should have been bypassed, it was yesterday’s.
And then we saw the road to get out of Cat Canyon. One turn, one maneuver can make an entire section of trail impassible, and that was true of Cat Canyon; for Carl at least. We managed without any damage.
After a couple of hours of fun canyon driving, we arrived at the intersection where we were supposed to meet Carl. Carl was not there. Caleb and Jennifer stayed put in case he showed up while NH and I drove around looking for him. And around, and around. We came back to see if he had showed up at the intersection, and there were Caleb and Jennifer. No Carl. We drove to Emery to get gas and to find cell phone signal in case he had tried to call—no messages.
Finally, after two hours of looking, and after deciding to drive back 30 miles on I-70 in case Carl had gone back to point A, we passed Carl going the other direction on the interstate. Carl pulled over while NH made an illegal U-turn. He had Carl in his sight, and he was not going to let him go.
Carl’s directions were, sadly, not accurate. There was no exit 105. It was exit 108. The mileages weren’t exactly accurate to the turns, either. Fortunately, nothing worse than a little extra time was lost, so we all gratefully headed back for the trail together.
After having driven through so many canyons, we were happy to see a new kind of landscape. The red dirt upon which we were driving, while soft and easily erodible, was not the top layer of earth in this part of the world. While the red dirt is eroding rather quickly, the rock layer above it is slower to erode. This causes washes and gullies of red soil with exposed and fallen hills of rock, slumping in strange hills with the foundations washing away beneath them. In most cases the rock was white and flat, falling over like the cement porches on old houses. In some cases the rock was oddly spherical, black volcanic rock. It littered entire hillsides like leftover canon shot from an old Civil War battle.
We made it to Salina, Utah today. Salina is pronounced Sah-LINE-ah, which doesn’t sound nearly as pretty as Saleena, as we had been pronouncing it. It sounds too much like saliva. Or slime.
In general, I am all for colloquial pronunciations of place names. Notre Dame with a French pronunciation denotes the church in Paris. Pronounced “noter dayme,” it denotes the Fighting Irish and their school. “Charlotte,” pronounced like the title character of the E. B. White book denotes a city in North Carolina; pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable, it’s a small town in southern Michigan. I like that when you’re in Chattanooga or Ooltewah, Tennessee, you can tell tourists from locals—only an out-of-towner pronounces the “l” in Ooltewah. It’s more like “Ew-te-waaah.” However, with Salina, I may just do their town a favor and pronounce that name like it has any scrap of dignity at all.
Camping in Butch Cassidy Camp and RV park tonight. It’s just as campy and/or gauche as it sounds. But I will take a hot shower, so that’s nice.
Written by E Henson