Spiral Jetty Road trip

Spiral Jetty Road Trip. Several years ago I was inspired by my son in law Brady who one Sunday afternoon on the spur of the moment jumped in the car with his kids and drove to see the Spiral Jetty. Due to an article I had read many years ago I mistakenly thought there was a lot of hiking involved and possibly rattlesnakes (which by the way the latter of which is true - just ask my daughter Kathryn!) But when I found out you can practically drive there, and more importantly that the lake was at a very low level, it was time for an art pilgrimage. I am lucky that my family love art as much as me so it took no encouraging to pile in the car for a road trip to the northern end of the Great Salt Lake at Rozel Point to visit the site of this iconic earthworks sculpture by Robert Smithson.

Just a bit about Smithson's sculpture before I go on...it is 1500 feet long and is made of black basalt rock, salt crystals, water and sand. Some years when the lake is high it is not even visible unless by boat, but fortunately we were able to see and walk on and around it. Earthworks artists like Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Walter De La Maria and others created sculptures in natural environments, mostly out of the way places. Their vision changed the trajectory and definition of modern sculpture. 

I was as impressed as I envisioned I would be as we walked over the ragged black rocks that formed the curving line of the spiral. But what I wasn't prepared for was the stark almost surreal beauty of the the adjoining salt flat and pinkish salt water of the nearby lake front. 

It was a perfectly clear day with a blue sky so intense that, if I painted it, no one would believe it was a natural color. The salt sparkled around the edges of salt water pools and in other areas cracked and hard to the point of misery. We explored all over the area and were delighted by the fluffy balls of foam that came from the lake waves and then rolled like tumbleweeds across the salt flat. We found an area that at one time might have been a long wooden dock - the wooden pilings making strident patterns against the soft mud and cloud filled sky.

So yes, the road trip to the Spiral Jetty was everything I hoped for but so much more!