NOTE: Names and locations of certain events in this entry have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals, although everything happened in Utah back in the 90s...

I would just like to start by saying that Utah might possibly be one of the most ridiculously religious places I've ever been in my life. Now don't get me wrong here - I have absolutely nothing against the religious community, and I cannot deny that it obviously has a very profound effect on people since just about everyone in Utah seems to have a big grin superglued to their face and will ask you pleasantly how you are doing as you pass them in the street. My philosophy has always been that, as long as nobody tries to force anything down my throat, and everybody remembers what the word "No" means, I'm quite happy to allow them to carry on believing that a talking snake told a woman not to eat an apple. The people in Utah, however, really do take things to extremes - probably due to the fact that the state is home to the Mormon HQ in the city of Salt Lake City. It seems virtually impossible, across the entire state, to find anyone who hasn't welcomed Jesus into their homes - I think they probably have some sort of policeman who visits houses at random, and if he doesn't find Jesus sitting in the living room watching the baseball then he carts people off to jail.

Case in point. I decided today to get some of my films developed, so I wandered along the neat little row of shops in Kanab and went into the first Kodak shop I came across. The door opened with a soft tinkle of its bell, and immediately a stunningly attractive young lady appeared from the back room with no visible space between the tips of her smile and her ears. She literally (well, figuratively actually, but lets not argue about semantics) lit the room up, and I felt straight away that I had somehow been welcomed into her home like a treasured family member. As soon as I laid my films on the counter and began to explain what I needed, she made a sudden startled inhalation of breath and began to look at me all dreamy-eyed as though I had just turned into a handsome prince: "You're British," she told me, in case I didn't know, "I lurve your accent. Go on, say something."

So I did. I told her that I'd really appreciate it if she could manage to get my films developed by this evening as I would be leaving town in the morning. She nodded politely, only half listening, took my rolls of film away and leant back on the counter to interrogate me about every tiny thing that ever went on in England. I began quite quickly, as you would, to think that my luck might be in here - so I must have spent the next half an hour sitting on the stool in front of the counter talking about home and answering questions about my age, whether I had a girlfriend, how long I was in town for, whether I thought American girls were hot, that sort of thing. Then her boss came in and she had to get back to work, but she made me promise to return during her evening shift so she could talk to me some more. Which, obviously, having not had so much attention heaped upon me in quite a while, I did.

When I returned in the evening, things only got better. She had clearly put on her best dress for the occasion, as though we were going on a date, and she looked quite incredibly beautiful when she took it upon herself to come out from behind the counter and give me a twirl. I didn't have a clue what I thought was going to happen - I was leaving in the morning, so unless I intended to shove her into my suitcase and take her with me I was only really stroking my own ego, but Becky (I had finally thought to ask what her name was) was really making me feel as though I'd at least made a lifelong friend here. For another half an hour or so, I sat on the stool regaling her with stories of my childhood and listening intently to stories of hers, before finally I realised that I needed to leave because I had booked a dinner show for around 8 O'clock and needed to go back to the hotel to get changed. Becky looked decidedly upset that I had to go, and wrote her address down on a piece of paper, saying that I should write to her when I got home. I was just getting up to leave, thinking how unexpectedly wonderful today had turned out to be, when, almost as an afterthought, she said "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"Of course not," I replied, "Ask anything you want"

Producing a pamphlet from under the counter, she placed it down in front of me, took hold of my hand, looked me squarely in the eye and said "Have you welcomed Jesus into your life yet?"

The dinner show I had arranged for this evening was at a restaurant called Chuckwagon Cookouts. Well I call it a restaurant, although to be honest it seemed more like an old western saloon. This wasn't the sort of place where I got the impression you could just turn up and sit down. My night out had been arranged as an excursion - a whole group of us would be eating together, and it turned out to be quite important that we all got along as we were also apparently providing the entertainment and would need to be able to perform together. Bear with me on this one - things will make more sense in a moment. After being shown in and seated at a single long table, we started chatting to each other and looking around to see what we had let ourselves in for - the restaurant looked like something out of the Wild West, making it seem more as though we were on a movie set than sitting down to eat. Down the middle of the room was a wooden railing which looked as though it would've been more at home outside with a few horses tied to it, and behind this were a row of tables on which a mind-blowing selection of finger foods were laid out. We were called up by table, shuffled politely along the buffet and helped ourselves to anything and everything, grabbed knives and forks from the box at the end, and sat back down to stuff our faces and wait for the main course. We'd all looked the menu over, but, to be honest, none of us had understood any of it - it wasn't that it was written in some foreign language or anything, it was simply that everything on the menu seemed to be adapted to suit the Wild West theme and unless you happened to have eaten food back in the old west then none of the descriptions meant much at all. There were Cowboy buscuits and Cowboy beans, not to mention potatoes slow cooked in a dutch oven - whatever one of those might be. What I had forgotten, of course, is that the word "biscuit" means a totally different thing in America - back in the UK, a biscuit is something you might buy in a packet with chocolate on top - in America, they call these Cookies. A biscuit over here is something akin to a scone back home, although something like a zillion times tastier and more palatable. An English scone will magically suck all of the moisture out of you and leave you desperately licking the top of your mouth and downing glasses of water for the rest of the day - an American biscuit manages to look the same while crumbling deliciously in the mouth and leaving a lovely buttery aftertaste. They even use them instead of burger buns when you order a Sausage McMuffin at McDonalds over here. Anyway, I digress.

Throughout dinner, various characters wandered through in full cowboy regalia, spurs jangling. Occasionally, one of them would stop to eye one of the diners suspiciously, fingering his guns for a moment as though expecting him to jump up and shout "Are you the man who shot my pa?". To be honest, it wouldn't have surprised me in the slightest if one of the diners had turned out to be a plant - it would have actually been pretty shocking if somebody who we had been chatting to casually all night had suddenly produced an authentic western pistol and started a gunfight - perhaps they should think about this for next season. I did get slightly annoyed by the fact that one particular waitress, dressed in several layers of long flowing skirts which I was surprised she could walk in, kept politely looking over my shoulder every time she passed and saying "Is everything okay there, Madam?". My hair is starting to get a big long after all my travelling, but I still don't think it's long enough for people to start thinking I'm a woman (The irony is that now, several years later when I've actually made a conscious decision to go around with long hair and it's well over the shoulder, nobody ever thinks I'm a woman. Now they just ask me if I'm into seventies rock music - Ed).

After we had eaten, and our plates had been taken away, it was time for the entertainment. Now, it has to be said in all fairness that it must be really difficult to come up with original forms of entertainment these days. If you go out for a dinner show, you pretty much know that you're going to be sitting at a table in front of a stage tucking into some grub while a comedian or a group of actors work their guts out in the hope that you'll tell your friends so there'll be another audience the next night. To come up with something original, especially something which people don't see coming, is probably the golden goose of the dinner show business - and I do fully appreciate that, for anyone thinking of visiting the Chuckwagon Cookout, what you are about to read will be something of a spoiler. At the Chuckwagon Cookout, the twist is that visitors provide the entertainment themselves. Yes, I know this sounds like it might make for the laziest production since records began, but it actually gave me one of the best nights out I've had in quite a while. Our hostess for the evening swept in, her voluminous skirts threatening to whip up over her head and smother her, and perched herself precariously on the end of our table. She then drew our attention to a courtyard beyond a pair of double doors at the back of the restaurant, which, she explained, would be the stage for the evening. We would be the actors, and we had five minutes to decide among ourselves which characters we would each be playing in the show. It was almost exactly like being on some sort of reality television game show, and I was just grateful that we had already eaten otherwise I might have suspected that we were performing for our dinner and any of us who didn't come up to par would be made to eat gruel.

Characters from which we could choose included various Cowboys, Indians, the Sheriff, Gunslingers, Prostitutes, Barmaids at the saloon, and passers-by. And yet, somehow, perhaps because I hadn't been paying attention at quite the right moment, I ended up playing a raccoon. Yep, you read that right - out of all the possible options, I got to be a small mammal with a stripy tail. And just in case the Big Brother analogy wasn't already complete enough, I even had to wear a costume consisting of a Davy Crockett hat, raccoon tail, fur shawl and stripy boots. I then had to spend most of the rest of the evening crawling around in the yard on all fours making clicking noises and rearing up on my "hind legs" on cue. Oh, what we have to do in the name of entertainment. Having chosen our characters, we were led out into the courtyard where we were given our costumes to get into. The yard was quite impressively made up as a street in the Wild West, complete with Sheriff's office and Saloon. We were each given stage instructions, lines to say, and positioned for action - there was even a cameraman on hand to take photos so that each of us would get to go home with a memento of just how incredibly stupid we had all been made to look. Particularly me. The play didn't, of course, last very long - some of the older members of the group looked as though they couldn't quite remember why they were there, let alone remember any lines. There was plenty of fumbling, missed lines, and gunslingers shooting the wrong people, but it was all great fun and everyone was smiling from ear to ear by the end of it. Yes, we had all been made to look unexpectedly stupid - but small town America does seem to have a certain knack of ensuring tourists go away ranting on about what a great time they've had. I mean, if you think about it, to construct the sets at the back of the restaurant and buy all the costumes must have set them back a fair few bucks, and at first glance you wouldn't imagine that they get much passing trade in a small town like Kanab. The difference with the US way of thinking is that they are far more likely to give something radical a try and see if it works, whereas back home we won't do anything unless we've got a signed guarantee that it'll make a fortune every night. This is why it's so much fun travelling across the US - there's something unusual to be found in almost every town. I've been to small towns over here with a population barely out of single digits and seen a flower shop in the high street - when I mention this to people in the UK they think I'm making it up, and ask how such a thing could survive. How many people need a bunch of flowers on a daily basis in such a small town, they ask. I still don't have the answer to this one - but however they manage it, small town America could probably teach us a thing or two about running a small business.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.