urbpan | The Spiral Jetty

Before we planned this trip, we considered trying to see the Spiral Jetty, an enormous piece of environmental art on the northern shore of The Great Salt Lake. Directions I found online made it seem very difficult to get to. It was. But we're glad we did it. 16 miles of unpaved road later--including the last two miles which seemed downright dangerous--and we found it. It's amazing to me that this thing is so remote and without any kind of interpretive signage or anything. Best of all, we finally got to see the Salt Lake.

We could see at a distance that there were other people there. Amazing, because we hadn't seen a person or a car in over two hours. We were grateful for them, because they lend scale to our pictures.

After we hiked down the treacherous rocky trail to the shore, we found that someone had duplicated the jetty in miniature. Can you imagine the audacity of putting your own environmental art right in front of one of the most famous works of environmental art?

Shocking.

I wasn't sure if the jetty would be above or below the water. It was quite dry.

And salty.

The terminal point of the spiral.

The water was a few feet away from the jetty, pink with halophilic bacteria.

We made sure that we both got our feet wet in Great Salt Lake.

We were really there!

The salt at the shore was crystallized into thin sheets.

The only living things we saw were the salt flies, which I believe feed on the bacteria. The other people were freaked out by "the bugs" but though there were thousands of flies, they kept to themselves.