America, The Beautiful

America is an amazing, large, complex, and most of all, beautiful nation as Mrs. rightviewfromtheleftcoast and our dog found out this past week on our long awaited road trip through the Rocky Mountains and the great American Southwest.
We started our trip last Saturday and ended up staying in St. George, Utah in the southern and possibly least Mormon part of Utah. Ahh, but there is not a least Mormon part of the state, period. Even there in St. George is a Mormon temple and an seemingly endless, cross less steeples all looking the same. But, we still felt right at home there.
As we drove up deep into Utah, the larger the cities, the more Mormon church buildings there were. And, later on Sunday we ended up in Salt Lake City and at the Mormon Temple, the Vatican of Mormonism. While we were taking our dog, Scout, on one of so many walks, we were encountered by two very lovely and foreign young ladies just outside the Temple Visitor Center. And we took them up on their offer to give us a tour of the Visitor Center and the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For full disclosure, Mrs. RVFTLC is not exactly a fan of the Mormon faith. But, she did not say anything more than we were both Christians and not particularly interested in changing our denomination. So, with that upfront, the two young ladies, one from Germany and one from Scotland proceeded to give us the tour and answered our many, genuine questions about the faith and the meanings of certain things. We left each other at the Tabernacle building, were the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform and it was on very nice terms with a card just in case we were interested in learning more about the LDS. I still have it, but not necessarily to learn more. A memento of our journey into Mormonism in Utah.
We continued into Wyoming and stayed the night in Evanston, Wyoming. Not much to it, but it is the largest town of about 11,000 in Southwest Wyoming. And the next day we continued on to Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming. Here is several things to note. There are very few real cities or towns in Southern Wyoming. Because of that, there are large swaths of the state in which there is no cell phone coverage. And, Wyoming is mostly flat and, shockingly, plain. It is a haunting beauty in many locales of the state. We finally made Cheyenne on that Monday evening and had a delicious steak dinner. Unfortunately, Scout is allergic to beef and we could not bring her a steak bone. So sad. The next day we tootled around Cheyenne and toured the state capital. An amazing place, as are all state capitals. For each has a history all of its own. And we had a wonderful tour guide. She was very informative and answered all questions that we had. Eventually, we had to say goodbye to Cheyenne and continue on to the main destination of the road trip, Deadwood, South Dakota.
An aside. We are HUGE fans of the HBO series Deadwood. Yes, watching it did makes us feel very dirty after each episode while their was more swearing in that hour on a Sunday than a whole mission on a naval vessel. But, it was an addicting series and it made us want to go to Deadwood and learn more.
Some things we learned on the way. While still in Wyoming, there are really towns that have as population, zero, one and zero. Unbelievable. And, there are a lot of abandoned farms all on the back roads where you can find the aforementioned towns.
Because of time restraints, the rest will be continued tomorrow. Hopefully then, I will have some photos to share with you.