Utah - July 9, 2021 - Day 8

Today's adventure involved four segments: a drive-by of Brigham Young University, Provo Canyon, Mirror Lake and Logan Canyon. 

Buttercup has become quite the photographer, and took this gem of a photo of Mirror Lake.

Brigham Young University

BYU is a major university with 33,000 undergraduates. For Chicagoans, everyone knows it as the alma mater of Jim McMahon - which always invites the question of why did he go there, and why did they accept him? It is one of life's mysteries. McMahon was the quarterback for the 1985 Super Bowl Champion Bears, and is a wild man. 

The campus is unremarkable except for one thing - I have never seen a major university without a bar scene and a host of student taverns. The BYU Code of Honor may explain it, as is summarized below.

The Code requires:

• Abstinence from illicit drugs, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea (substances forbidden by the LDS Words of Wisdom)

• Honesty

• Encouraging others in their commitment to keep the Honor Code

• Living a chaste and virtuous life:

• Appropriate gender-specific behavior (no sexual harassment)
• No involvement with pornographic or indecent material
• No inappropriate sexual activity (no premarital or extramarital sex)
• No homosexual behavior

• Obedience to the law

• Maintaining an ecclesiastical endorsement from a leader of the local congregation or the nondenominational BYU chaplain

• Respect for others

• Clean language (no profanity)

• Following the "Residential Living Standards" (visiting hours for members of the opposite sex)

• Dress and Grooming Standards: Abiding by the guidelines for dress, grooming, and housing.  Skirts must reach to the knee and shirts may not be sleeveless. Form-fitting, strapless, and revealing clothing is not appropriate. Male students may not wear beards or goatees; hair length must be above the ears; and sideburns must not extend below the ear lobe.

• Students are prohibited from having guns on campus.

Specific additional restrictions on appearance have been mentioned including those deemed as "extreme fashion" including a ban on shaved heads for women, blue hair, long nails or eyeshadow for men, and any piercings besides a single pair for women. 

I don't think I would have survived. 

Provo Canyon

We went over the Wasatch Mountains to Heber City - where we began our mountain adventure. The highlight of the byway was Bridal Veil Falls and the Provo River. 

The river was fast, and gurgled just as you expect making a pleasing, gentle sound. It moistened the air, and gave-off a certain coolness: both in temperature and in bearing. There were a lot of people there, suggesting that they know it as a special place. 

This is a pic. looking from the base up to the Falls:

This is the base of Bridal Veil Falls:

Pics of the stream, upstream:

And downstream:

It is in the mountains, and is therefore only open in summer. 

There were three paths at Bridal Veil Park: one for bikes, one for pedestrians and one for everything else. The Parking Lot had a sign which said "No Parking." But the lot was filled. We used Buttercup as a Parking Lot model to illustrate. 

Even beyond the Falls, the roadway was beautiful. They even had fly fishermen in the middle of the river:

Once we were through Heber City, we came upon an elevation which allowed us to look down at the Jordanelle Reservoir, and the cool dam built in 1993. It is not only a water source, but a recreation area.

Mirror Lake Scenic Byway

The third part of the trip was the Mirror Lake Scenic Byway. 

You will note how green it is. It was cool with temperatures in the 70s and 80s, and there was the smell of pine in the air. This is what the roadway looked like as it wound through the forest:

It is so different from the canyonlands of southern Utah. 

There are a series of lakes on this byway. But there was no good way to take photos (except for the one by Buttercup), so I pulled some photos off the Internet. This is the first lake we encountered, Lily Lake:

And Mirror Lake:

Along the way, we stopped at Provo Falls, which was fantastic.

Water is life:

These are all photos from Magellan and Buttercup, as I had to babysit my idling Harley due to the battery issue. 

Wyoming

After the Mirror Lake Byway, we needed to cover about 80 miles through the Wyoming plains. We stopped in to a terrific little sandwich place, for what was my best meal of the trip (a BLT). I thought I was very clever by taking the last parking spot before the street corner, so we could have an easy exit and could stack three bikes in one parking spot.

That is, until some jerk parked in a no parking area and blocked me in. First World Problems. 

The wind was bruising, and it was difficult to push the bike through the gale while driving through the plains. There was nothing to see but ranchland. But what really concerned Buttercup were the gas prices:

Logan Canyon Scenic Byway

Logan Canyon, which is the part of the byway on the Utah side, was great. I was so enthralled with the beauty of the canyon, I took us to the wrong hotel. 

Dinner

We tried to get an Uber from our hotel to a dinner spot, but failed. The same for Lyft. So we drove our bikes to a Bar-B-Que Restaurant. It was an hour + wait. So we went across the street to Buffalo Wild Wings - my first time in one. Though they only had about ten tables seated, they could not accommodate any more people because they cannot get labor. 

So we went across the street to a pizza place: $9.00 for all you can eat pizza, pasta and salad. You get a lot of quality food for that price. Magellan was out of his mind - first with the dessert pizza (he had peach pizza) and the "people watching." All blond children, and many of them in each family, all of whom seemed to be well-behaved. Where did we go wrong?

Magellan is agonizing over his dessert pizza choices: 

Taps

This was our last full day on the road. Tomorrow, we head down to Salt Lake, settle in at Little America again, and visit Temple Square. Our mileage today was 285.