Saturday 4th April – Salt Lake City
I woke up quite early and on the right time zone for a change 🙂 So, I went straight out into the garage and started work. Ken was going to take me to some outdoors shops this morning to look for some tents, sleeping pads etc, but mainly a tent, so I needed to get something done before then.
Things progressed before I was called up for some great bacon and eggs 🙂 That was when I noticed this as I sent a SPOT message to home on the back deck:
I thought it was a tad cool while I was working but had not noticed 🙂
We headed out shopping and there were two shops across from each other and I checked out all the tents in both. I was under the impression before I left that you could get good cheap tents here in the USA, well that is not the case. Just for an example, here is a picture of my OzTrail tent which I left at home:
This is a 3 person, 2 seasons, all screened with NoSeeUm mesh, two doors and two windows, fully waterproof fly with two small vestibules, it has fibreglass poles and is free standing. This cost me $75AU which is about $52US, I cannot get anything of that quality here under $130US although I am trying 😦 After looking at both stores, I did manage to find an Exped 7 Down filled air mattress, at about an equivalent rate so it was not a wasted day.
I had also misplaced the mounting kit for my centre stand, so we went down to the local Honda/ Suzuki shop, we also to get some hook-up wire for Ken. It is still snowing and cold, but from the young fellow in the background, you would not think so 🙂
They had no wire for Ken and although they were helpful, could not get any info about mounting kits but they said to call back Monday and they would contact Suzuki. There was another shop that Ken knew of for cable and the bloke in there was very helpful. It was an RV and Marine place and I think his name was Chay or Shay, something like that. We ended up getting some cable for a 12V outlet on Ken’s bike, a few connectors and a half tube of Sikaflex for my radiator screen mount, all for next to nothing, great 🙂
We headed back and the snow had turned to rain, very depressing, lucky we were in a truck!
But, it seemed sunny at their home, so it was weird, but I guess just normal spring weather! When we got back and started doing some wires, Bev mentioned about another place over town that also had tents, so we went there as well. I looked at everything but they once again were too expensive for what I wanted. I was beginning to think about getting my Aussie tent sent over! I grabbed a battery charger so the trip was not wasted before we went back via a Liquor store. I wanted to buy some beer for the evening, as there were some people coming over for dinner. Ken does not drink, so the lady tried to help us out with brands etc, she told us about this particular beer which is very good if you like the smell of skunk and went on to sniff the bottle!!! I don’t think so, although I have not smelt a skunk, I understand I do not want to. The bottle was shaped like a hand grenade, so maybe open it up and throw Skunk at everyone you don’t like? I ended up buying some ‘Icehouse’, while Ken got some ‘Hazed and Infused’ in case his visitors wanted some.
So, we got back and had a quick and late lunch, before we installed his Cig lighter socket on his dash and I continued on with my wiring, this time it was the fuse box install.
This continued for a few more hours until the guests started to arrive when I met Fenton, who is Ken and Bev’s son and also neighbours Wayne and Patty, who both ride off road and go to a lot of national enduro races where Wayne participates. We had a great dinner and some stories were told. It turns out the whole family ride bikes which is great.
A bit of a late night and Bev told me about another camp shop down south and from their web page, it looked like they had a couple of good tents. Ken was interested in going for a ride; the choice was mine, so in the morning we would see depending on the weather.
Cheers
TravellingStrom
TravellingStrom 