Tiffy's Utah Birthday

Today we drove west to see the salt flats, which are very flat and white. We went to a place called Saltair Palace which looks kind of like a mosque, and from there we waded out into the Great Salt Lake, which was no more than a foot deep at that point. In Saltair Palace we saw pictures from the Roaring Twenties when it was the place to be, with an amusement park and all sorts of people swimming and hanging out on the beach. Tiffy's theory is that air conditioning made the beach obsolete. Swimming around in the Great Salt Lake are lots of tiny, bright orange brine shrimp; otherwise, not much else lives there.

Then we went to the Red Bluff Botanical Garden, which is part of the University of Utah, and walked around for hours admiring their flowers and hiking on some trails out in the hills. We saw some very cute quail, and I thought I made a movie of them, but it didn't work. They make such cute little sounds, and they look kind of like small, brown chickens with a long feather hanging forward from their head.

We returned to Naked Fish for dinner, since it was so delicious the first time, then we took a carriage ride through the canyon in town, which is a very quiet, beautiful neighborhood shockingly close to downtown. It was a perfect night with a gentle breeze and a gorgeous sunset giving way to a full moon. We ended the evening by going to the Italian bistro two doors down from Naked Fish for dessert while listening to a jazz band playing in their courtyard. So Tiffy had a great birthday and we both had a great vacation.

Famous Hat