S2E4: There’s a Banksy in Park City, Utah.

Day 4: Sept 13, 2023
Ophir, UT →
Vernal, UT
Mileage: 223

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Yesterday’s overstimulation resonates throughout the night, so neither of us sleep well. A truck with an RV trailer shows up at 2:30 a.m. While they are on the other end of the campground, there’s enough noise to make me poke my head out of the tent. Given we’re alone and in entirely new surroundings, safety becomes top of mind. Thankfully, it’s just campers leveling their trailer.

We both wake up feeling like hot garbage, so taking it slow today is a priority. We have time on our side before we reach St. Louis, so we take two small side trips. We head into Salt Lake City to have morning beverages and a breakfast bar from Three Pines Coffee. They serve Heart Coffee Roasters and execute great drinks. Recommended if you’re in downtown SLC.

The weather is today’s theme. SLC is cloudy and brisk. We feel like we’re in Portland or Seattle, so we move on quickly to Park City, hoping for clearer skies. Home of the Sundance Film Festival, Park City is your idyllic mountain ski town. For lunch, we partake in empanadas from Tina’s Bakery, then grab coffee and a juice at Pink Elephant/Land Juicery. There’s also a cool outdoorsy-streetwear-gorpcore shop called Lazy Sun that is fun to peruse.

The weather is still raining and cold, and it ultimately becomes the underlying reason for our next move: cashing in credit card points for a hotel stay before our next leg into Colorado.

Weather chases us the entire drive to our stop in Vernal, Utah, with heavy rain and lightning abundant. We check into our chosen hotel, and though it could use some renovations and updates, having a shower and bed to sleep in will provide the reset that we need.

The sun comes out around 5 p.m., so we head to a nearby park to make an easy dinner out of the back of our rig. Food options in Vernal aren’t really our thing: it’s chain-land. Having your own food with you is a small luxury and wonderfully comforting.

So I’m sitting here writing this from a bed in a room that feels like it would have been fancy in the 1980s. And that is a-okay.