Alaska Trip Day 8: Moab Springs Ranch → Salt Lake City

An easy 3 and half hour drive. There will be things along the way. It’s Utah!

[Remember: this is just a Virtual Virus Vacation. It’s what I had booked before had to cancel coz Covid-19].

Weather today in Salt Lake City. 18-23 and fine. Perfect! 

To Salt Lake City, last visited in the winter of 1998. John our son was a newborn. We carted him around in one of those cocoons, sliding it along on the snow, pulling it with a rope. So it’s winter, when we went to Park City, the famous skiing town.

Yours truly, 1998.  Park City, Utah. Head Skis, Lange Boots, iirc

Beautiful snow as I recall. I’m going to find and post a photo of me here. Not John or Jing only because I don’t have any of them — used to have, in photo albums, but they got lost in a move, and this photo I’ve had pinned next to my desk in the midst of a hundred others.

So, again, I’m imagining the drive is a fine one. I’ve driven in this area before, in winter, with snow on the ground, and it’s fine, jus fine.

When we were here in 1998 we were talking to a guy in Salt Lake City who’d been labelled the “Young US Entrepreneur of the Year”, an earnest, young-ish man who had developed a wraps business, and franchised it. We were looking to get the franchise for the Far East.  Failing the whole of the Far East, then Hong Kong. 

We talked business, he took us around to his outlets. On the way, he proselytised on Mormonism, this being its heartland. He insisted on stopping to buy us a “Book of Mormon”. Which is simply the most boring book ever written. Allah, or God, or Yawheh, strike me down if I’m wrong. 

We didn’t buy his franchise, because we thought it rather too simple. No competitive advantage that we could see. 

As it happens we later bought the Master Franchise for Wall Street Institute English language training system, which did have a competitive advantage, what Warren Buffett calls a “Moat”.  And we did well with it. 

But this is about Utah, in the here and now. We were supposed to be there, driving NorthWeset to SLC, from Moab Springs Resort. Today. But have been Covid-ded. 
Mind you, we’re lucky that that’s our main loss. We feel for all those, younger folks, with kids and businesses and mortgages, and lost jobs, and broken dreams, and and and... all of whom have lost to this pandemic. Heartbreaking.