Category Archives: Expeditions

Natural History Museum of Utah: Because Dinosaurs, That’s Why

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I love museums. I sort of have a museum situation, which is a way of saying that I have a museum problem without admitting that it’s a problem. I can spend the whole day in a museum and never get bored, and it’s more than just the exhibits. I cherish fine art museums and embrace my puzzlement at modern art museums and I even enjoy bizarre little local history museums and roadside attraction museums. I’m pretty sure I’d even enjoy that museum with the cavemen riding dinosaurs, if only to bask in our obvious mutual love for Dino-Riders. (I even had a good time with the “museum” section of that Dino-Riders fan site. That is how seriously I take this, you guys.)

I geek out over the brilliance of the exhibit design and how engaging some particular attraction must be for little children (ignoring of course the fact that I myself am usually behaving like a little child by this point) and the mix of kid-sized and grown-up attractions and the interactivity of the exhibits and the sheer mind-blowing majesty of the dinosaur bones and… I could go on, but I won’t. Frankly, when you get me into the proper museum frame of mind I tend to become a little sub-verbal and start gesticulating wildly rather than using my words.

So it’s probably obvious to you by now that one of the things I missed the most, when I was living the last handful of years in very small-town rural America, was having a proper museum at my disposal. When I moved back to Salt Lake last year, I was overwhelmingly delighted to learn that the Natural History Museum of Utah — easily my favorite kind of museum — was brand new and improved. I loved the old museum, which was kind of musty and dark and in my memory possessed nothing but endless halls of taxidermy and shelves full of pinned insects. But the new museum just about made me lose my shit with joy. My photos didn’t do the building’s architecture justice, but if you check out their website they’ve got some great pictures of what the building looks like. I have brought you instead a lot of pictures of dinosaurs. Because dinosaurs, that’s why.

If I were a Dino-Rider, I would use one of these things as my epic cavalry mount. With lasers.

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There Is A Time To Every Purpose Under Heaven, Including Shaking Your Money-Maker

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Sometimes I worry about my fellow Utahns. Do you think it’s possible to die of being too uptight?

I went out tonight even though “going out” is not really my forte. One of my favorite bands of ever, Hey Rosetta!, was opening a show at In the Venue, and although that’s not exactly my favorite place in the world, I figured if one of my favorite bands could come all the way from Newfoundland, I could probably drag myself out of the house to see them. I was pretty excited about this excursion, even though I was going out by myself and would end up texting half the night just to appear slightly less forever alone. (This strategy doesn’t work, by the way. Everybody totally knows you’re forever alone, and texting your friends in Canada only reminds you of how lame it is that you don’t live in Canada.) I spent my workday humming “Welcome” to myself and chair-dancing. I’m not proud. Hopefully nobody saw me.

The band’s set was awesome, in case you were wondering. The club was absurdly hot, the sound system was slightly embarrassing, but if there’s one thing that Hey Rosetta! knows how to do, it’s very gently rocking your face off. (In the best way, though. Like, they blow your mind in a totally considerate fashion.)

It’s entirely possible I was the only person there just to see the opening act, and entirely possible I was the only one there who had ever heard Hey Rosetta! before, and for awhile as I watched the stone-still crowd I was kind of worried that maybe none of these people were going to appreciate the native songs of Newfoundland… it’s always more fun when you can share the things you love with others. Of course, the awesomeness of Hey Rosetta! is an unstoppable juggernaut of truth that cannot be denied; the crowd seemed to be digging it, and between songs their enthusiasm and appreciation was evident. But they still were not moving. I am familiar with this phenomenon because I’ve been to a few other shows since moving back to Utah, but I still can’t get used to it. For awhile there, I was worried that I’d unwittingly stumbled into some sort of theme night. Like maybe we were all supposed to be pretending to be exhibits at a wax museum, or possibly we were playing a game of red light green light and nobody was in charge to give us a green light. A couple times I saw one or two people bobbing their heads. (Solidarity, brothers!) Otherwise, as far as I could tell, I was the only almost-dancer in the room, and I wasn’t doing much more than swaying and giving my hips an undoubtedly embarrassing shimmy. (By Utah standards, I believe this is the equivalent of being drunk, high and godless all at the same time.)

Look, I know what it’s like. I’m a native, and in my time away from the beehive state I came to embrace the place that my heritage has given me in the greater social scheme of things, which generally consisted of being the most unhip, uncoordinated person in any given room. Utah is all about repression, and you can’t help but absorb that shit like a sponge when you grow up here. I’ve come to terms with it. But I feel like every time I go out to see a show around here, the entire audience steals my gig by being very Utahn and very white and refusing to move at all, ever. And then I feel pressured to set an example somehow — look! Dancing is allowed! — but I don’t actually know how to dance so then I just get insecure and what I’m saying is, your refusal to dance is bad for my self-esteem.

I know it’s rough, you guys. I know there’s not a lot of space. I know dancing can be awkward and weird. You can start small. Bob your head. Tap your foot. Let your hips get in on the action. I know it seems a little sinful but that kid in Footloose had some pretty convincing arguments about why God would be down with you dancing, and personally I trust Kevin Bacon’s research and believe it to be impeccable. Nobody’s going to judge you for getting your groove on. When I go full plaid, I kind of look like this guy:


Guy starts dance party

That guy danced like an idiot and look how well it turned out for him! He made a ton of friends and started a movement and was even the subject of a TED Talk. Just think: cut loose and you could become famous on the Internet! Nobody’s expecting you to be Channing Tatum. (You were expecting that to be a stripper video, weren’t you? Admit it.) Just start with being the flailing guy on the hill, and go from there.

Maybe we should all learn to dance together. There are resources out there for people like us, my fellow unhipnicks. We can learn. I believe this is a reliable educational source, and once we’ve mastered those moves we can go on to the advanced seminar. When you’re done with that, you can study this video of Tim dancing with a tambourine. (It’s not homework, it’s just awesome.) I believe in my heart that if we all work on unwinding our spines, extracting our broomsticks, and letting the devil into our pelvises (that’s totally going to be the name of a new dance I’m going to invent), we’ll all have a much better time.

Sincerely,

me

P.S. I love you all, even though I find your lack of dancing disturbing. And you really ought to go buy some Hey Rosetta! CDs or something.

A Walk Through Dimple Dell Nature Park

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Recently I took my dog Trudeau on an excursion to Dimple Dell Nature Park in Sandy, Utah. This adventure was extensively researched and pre-planned, by which I mean that I was looking for directions to somewhere else on Google Maps and found myself wondering what that big block of green was over there and whether it might be of some use to me in attempting to exhaust my dog, and so I decided to take him there completely on impulse.

Exhausting my dog is, in fact, something of a personal mission of mine. It never works out — he always out-staminas me, the bastard — but he likes to allow me my illusions and I find it diverting to seek out new adventures on his behalf. Because it was raining off and on even in the valleys that day, there was no way that I was going to attempt any mountain trails, but Dimple Dell looked promising, since according to the maps it ran right through the middle of residential areas. Our duties discharged and errands run, we drove on toward the trailhead (well I say we, but I was driving, because no matter how much he begs I am not going to give Trudeau the keys). The Granite Park Trailhead was surprisingly easy to find, and from there we had plenty of options, with several small dirt tracks branching off directly from the trailhead and a single large, well-maintained, woodchipped path which soon revealed itself by way of signage to be the North Rim trail. Figuring that it would be very difficult for me to get lost on such an expanse of trail (difficult but not impossible, because it is me we’re talking about here), we stuck primarily to the North Rim trail.

Although the wood chips undoubtedly make for a nice dry trail even on wet days, I found the footing far too spongey to be comfortable — it’s just enough like walking on a sand dune to tire you out. Trudeau had no such qualms, but he also spent most of the walk sniffing things, peeing on things, and trying to engage other dogs in fisticuffs, so he probably wasn’t paying much attention to the footing.

Dimple Dell is an on-leash park, but Trudeau makes a hobby out of breaking the rules, because he is a rebel. And I only took his leash off long enough to snap a photo, because he is also kind of a dick.

Despite the fact that Dimple Dell is apparently 644 acres in total, the sections of trail that we covered felt more like a neighborhood park than a wilderness trail. The trail truly does run through neighborhoods and often winds along the back fences of houses, which is not always a pleasant experience when there are dogs in there and you have Trudeau along, because as mentioned previously, Trudeau is kind of a dick.

Still, the walk was quite pleasant, with some beautiful views of the very close Wasatch range, and more distant views of the Oquirrhs.

We didn’t spot much in the way of wildlife, unless you count lichen…

I don’t even know if this is actually lichen, I just like to say “lichen”.

…and a few scrub jays, which insisted on staying just far enough away that I could barely get a decent photo, even with my longest zoom.

Come over here bird, I just want to be your friend. Trudeau might try to eat you, though. He tries to eat everything.

There was also a dog in a backyard, which I heard but never actually saw, which made a growling sound that was eerily similar to that of a mountain lion and which nearly gave me a heart attack. Oh and also a few kids in a backyard, one of whom leaned over his back fence and shouted to his friends for a good five minutes, “DEER POOP! THERE’S DEER POOP BACK HERE! HEY YOU GUYS, I FOUND SOME DEER POOP!” So one must assume that there are occasionally also deer, but I never saw any. Nor their poop, for that matter.

All in all, it was an enjoyable way to pass an afternoon, and it warmed up enough that I wished I had in fact pre-planned (water would’ve been a good idea) and Trudeau almost seemed a little tired by the time we got back to the trailhead. We could probably spend weeks covering all of the trails in Dimple Dell, which branched out like spiderwebs along the ridgelines and valleys, but since we don’t live in that area — and I prefer more well-packed trails — we probably won’t be frequent visitors, no matter how attractive the lichen is.

[Edit: WOOHOO, thanks WordPress for Freshly Pressing this entry, and thanks to everyone for visiting! If you'd like to read more on what it's like to live in Utah and how it can turn you into a homicidal maniac, you might also be interested in one of my most recent entries, It's Just Like the Road Warrior, Only with Minivans. I hope you'll stick around and read a bit more!]