May 7

About a week a go I was coerced, err invited to tag along with my brother as he went around to local businesses to hang up posters for the University of Utah Jimmyball Basketball Camps. Here's what I was seeing...



First things first, local indigenous flora.


We hit paydirt at Whole Foods


Then the fire crew showed up, and parked rather conveniently.


If I shot this in July you'd damn well better believe there'd be fireworks and at least one Bald Eagle in the frame


Signage


Here's my brother singing in the car and doing some choreography. He does this all the time. Here he's singing something by Alabama and ridiculing me for not knowing who the hell they are.


Speeding home


When we got home Jason proceeded to sit down on the couch and fall asleep for a good 3 hours.


And with that, I'm done

Beautiful Desolation

I was driving home on the Legacy Parkway from Ogden today, and I looked out the passenger window and saw...

nothing.

It was a welcome change from the sprawling suburbs I normally see when I take I-15 home, and it got me thinking about how much I like road trips. Not for where I'm going*, but what I'll see along the way.










*I've only road tripped to 3 places. Southern California a few times, Vegas a ton, and one ill advised family road trip to Illinois. We did the last one when I was eight and my brother six. Illinois was fun, the drive to and from was horrible

Daybreak

So the other night I just drove around. I wasn't going anywhere specific, I was just going for the sake of going. I wound up in Herriman out by where Kennecott processes the heavier metals they unearth. To get to that lovely and scenic local I had to drive through Daybreak, a housing development that Kennecott started. It's a tremendous mess of one way streets and roundabouts, but it seems nice enough despite all that (and being miles away FROM ANYTHING GOOD). On my way back I noticed a collection of seemingly perfect ledges in a shopping area.

Before I get too far along, the whole place seems way too nice just to be a housing development. It's either A) a cult that's going to attempt to take over the valley or commit mass suicide or B) a huge cover up for what could only be a disaster of epic proportions that Kennecott somehow had a hand in. It's just weird out there. Anyway, back to the story...

I pull into a parking lot, hop out and begin to look around.

Side note: I feel that now is as good a time as any to let you know that I was wearing my gray hoodie, green beanie and black knit gloves. Sensible people would realize that I was just trying to keep from freezing to death. Idiots in an almost too perfect housing development/cult epicenter would think I came to rob people blind. Sorry.

All the ledges are the perfect height: just below knee high. And there are flat gaps galore! It's a hell of a spot. Or it would be if everything wasn't knobbed. (But hey! They have a fire pit that's going day and night!) I decided that it would be a better idea to go back in the daytime, so I left.

That was Wednesday. I come back Friday to be greeted with 36 degrees for a high, a fierce, bone chilling wind (Remember the fire pit?), and a family who was having their family portraits taken.



I came for the ledges, but I stuck around for the giant metal guy leaning into the wind. How I missed him I'm not sure, but there he was.





Daybreak may be full of cultist freaks who have been mutated by whatever is buried under their houses, but they do make a guy feel welcome buy having a fire going.