Today we started out the morning by going to the National Wildlife Art Museum, on a hot tip from my mom. First we made some wildlife art of our own by photographing the ground squirrels and marmots in the parking lot. Ground squirrels are the little chipmunky ones, and marmots look like confused beavers who are hanging out in a parking lot instead of damming a river.
The museum is pretty cool--thanks, Ma! It is an a beautiful building and is very well curated--for example, one of the exhibits was on different genres of depicting animals: as a heroic male, an object of hunters, an organic part of their environment, anthropomorphized, etc. with groups of paintings demonstrating each type of depiction. We learned, for example, that many 19th century depictions emphasize how great hunting is in America, since in most of Europe commoners were not allowed to hunt, while in America it was not just a popular pasttime but a necessity. Another exhibit talked about a guy who revolutionized taxidermy by using anatomically detailed wireframe sculptures of the animals as a basis. My other favorite exhibits were a great explanation of each step of the lost wax casting process (including "sandblasting" which I'm pretty sure my art history textbook left out) and all the Wyoming entries for the national duck stamp competition. There was some very cool contemporary art as well...I actually wish there had been more.
After Jackson, it was on to Utah! We took a bit of a...detour down a bit of highway we never meant to be on and ended up following a turnoff for Fossil Butte National Monument, because why not? It turned out to be an excellent decision. Our path was immediately blocked by two men on horseback, six sheepdogs, and several hundred sheep being herded across the road. It was awesome to watch and the dogs did a fantastic job.
When I got out of the car to take a picture, one of the dogs trotted over to me and started making funny noises...I think it was trying to get me back to the herd and was only satisfied when I got in the car and started driving toward the rest of the sheep. This also helped answer the question, "what are they doing with all those horses we see grazing on the roadside? and later we also saw a farmer plowing (I think it was plowing, although why you'd need to plow a livestock field I don't know) a field of cattle using a horse-drawn plow...I guess it's less likely to spook the cows.
For those following along at home, the list of animals that have at some point blocked our way is now at:
1) Bison
2) Deer (briefly)
3) Sheep
Once the sheep were done we continued up the road to the national monument. It turns out there isn't really much you can see of the monument itself at the moment, but they do have a fantastic visitors center. Fossil butte used to be a lake millions of years ago, and there are, according to the rangers, several trillion fish fossils in it. They've also found some rarer fossils, like two snakes, a primitive horse, and a couple of bats (one of which is currently at the Yale Peabody Museum, and the other of which was featured on the cover of Nature...you can read a summary of the article here but the summary of the summary is that the fossil supports the theory that bat-flight evolved before bat-echolocation). They told us all about the procedure for finding fossils...apparently it's quite easy, as when you break open a rock with a fossil in it, it will tend to split open right where the fossil is, because the fossil creates structural weakness. There are places you can even do this commercially and take your fossil home with you, although none were open when we went. The next step is to dig the fossil out of the rock, using a tiny jackhammer-like tool. This part can be done either super-carefully, like a scientist would do it, or commercial-grade, which takes about one twentieth the time. Apparently most of the fossils are actually on privately owned land, and the landowners don't have any obligation to keep the fossils in perfect condition, or to preserve them at all, although the nicer fossils the private landowners find often end up sold to museums or corporations and dug out very carefully. (A rare fossil like a snake will run a few hundred thousand dollars...a large group of aesthetically pleasing but common fossils (like fossils of a mass die-off of fish, often caused by changes in water temperature or chemistry) will be in the ten to twenty thousand range, and a dirt common small fossilized fish is about forty bucks.) We learned that the kerogen shale containing the fossils could potentially be mined for oil, although none of the techniques available are sufficiently energy-efficient to make sense. If you scratch the shale with your finger, it smells like natural gas.
Next, it was onward to Salt Lake City! We got there in time to have dinner and pop in to the visitors center at the Temple Square--the center is very nice and impressive, especially if the word "tacky" isn't in your vocabulary.
The two missionaries at the visitors center somehow chose us to latch on to and it was just kind of painful. They trailed us around the place and were so enthusiastic and apparently really thought that conversational gambits like, "who is your favorite prophet?" (waits for answer, does not care what answer is) "there is always a prophet on earth. The current one is Thomas Monson. He gives us direction and helps tell us the Word so we will never be confused..." and then giving us a form to fill out us we could get a followup visit are actually successful ways of gathering converts. It felt exactly like being followed off the T by some creepy guy trying to get my phone number...I'm guessing some missionaries are better at it than ours were.
The big focus in the visitors center is on Bible stories and "God likes strong healthy families"; the center is obviously trying very hard not to turn off mainstream Christian visitors. There is a very noticeable lack of depictions of scenes from the Book of Mormon or anything else related to specifically Mormon theology--well, the "forever families" thing had a Mormon undercurrent, but it was easy not to notice if you didn't know it was there. The other thing that was strange was walking down the street and hearing tourists flag down the Mormons walking down the street--"sisters! Do you know if that building is open?" However, I was surprised by how normal the rest of Salt Lake City, outside of the Temple Square, felt...there are breweries and restaurants that serve wine and all of that.
We also went across the street to the conference center, which seats 21,000 people. A nice guy who worked there let us in and showed us about how the engineering works, what they use it for, the green roof, etc. We will be back in the morning to check it out!
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