Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City really did not live up to our expectations. TO be honest we didn't see much of the city as we just slept in a Walmart and decided to head to the Grand Canyon via the great salt lake to see what all the fuss was about. We had read in Lonely Planet that the lake was so salty that you could easily float in it, similarly to the Dead Sea. We thought that sounded like a lot of fun so headed over. When we got there we were met by an unimaginable stench of what can only be described as death. Despite this we powered through parked the van and headed across the sand to the lakes edge. After about 2 steps we realised that the sand was swarming with literally millions of tiny bugs, each time you took a step they kind of leapt out of the way and settled back down. You could hear a sort of crackling noise as they all hopped away in unison, it was horrible. Despite all this we still decided the lake would be worth it, we continued about 10 more metres and were met by hundreds of corpses of dead birds all at different stages of decompsure. We we horrified and ran through them to the lake, the lake smelt awful and was full of gooey seaweed type stuff, we put a finger in the lake to say we had technically been in it and headed straight back. Unfortunately on the way back Izzy managed to step in some quick sand like mud and sank, she jumped out but her shoes remained. Izzy was nearly in tears at the situation and i was nearly in tears laughing about it! I managed to get her shoes but she couldn't put them on as they were caked in thick salty mud. She had to walk back across the crunchy, salty sand bare foot, making sure not to step on any decomposing birds as she went. Needless to say we were very happy to be leaving The Great Salt Lake! I wouldn't recommend it!