John Statz

Sorry it is taking a long time to get this now month-old story out, I’ve been a bit busy lately. Here is the (near) final installment in the early May Wyoming/Utah trip tales…

After some greasy breakfast and coffee with Mr. Brett Turner (yes, greasy breakfast and coffee with music friends is a MUST while on the road), we parted ways and I headed south out of Ogden. My destination was Moab, where I was playing a house concert that night, but I would have to make a few interesting pit-stops on the way, the first of which was Salt Lake City.

My Utah experience until this trip was pretty limited: Moab, Park City, and a drive through southern Utah to Las Vegas, as well as driving past SLC once. I had to stop, and I’ll admit, I’m a bit fascinated by the whole “Salt Lake City is to Mormonism as Rome is to Catholicism” thing, so, after a brief stop to the State Capitol, I walked down to Temple Square. Of course, this is the image everyone has in mind, and the only thing I really knew about downtown SLC…

Yep, it is a big church, though not as big as I thought it would be. No disrespect to Mormons, by the way, it just isn’t St. Pete’s in Rome is all. So yea, there are some pretty flowers, and lots of weddings going on (I probably ended up in the background of some photos), and since they don’t let non-Mormons into the Tabernacle, that was about it for my visit. There is also this weird office building, which actually houses the headquarters of the Church of Latter-Day Saints:

There is something very impersonal and strange, to me, anyways, about running a faith out of an office building. Makes it seem kind of like, I don’t know, a business…

Anyways, out of SLC and on to Moab!

Well, that is, until I decided to pull off the highway outside of Price, Utah for a creepy-as-hell trek down this dirt road:

The road leads into Horse Canyon, which seemed like a place that might have some hiking trails or something. Wrong, and like outside of Laramie on day 1 of this trip, I once again landed myself in super-creepy territory. After the road entered the canyon, I quickly came upon ruins of some type.

Again, I was the only human in sight, and there was an eerie wind blowing through the canyon. Despite the beautiful, sunny day, I felt cold. And if anyone has seen The Hills Have Eyes (the original), you might be able to get a sense for the weirdness in the air. I fully expected mutants to climb down the walls of the canyon after me. How about a few more strange pictures:

This was as far as I dared to venture inside on my lonesome. How about those large holes in the wall by the graffiti?

There were more of those human silhouette spots all over the outside (and inside, from what I could see) of the buildings. I found it weirder that they didn’t have bullet holes all over them, because I could see some locals using them for target practice. So why were they there?

Couldn’t really muster up the courage to go through this door…

I wandered around the ruins for about a half-hour, but could not shake the freaky vibes, and so, before becoming a victim in a Wes Craven film, I drove the hell out of Horse Canyon. Yea, I’m probably a big wuss. After reaching Moab I did some research and found out that the buildings were part of the abandoned Horse Canyon Mine, which this decidedly brave Price, UT local unabashedly explored and photographed, incredibly. I’ll go back with a friend sometime, I promise.

Oh yeah, check out that drive into Moab:

I played a house concert that night for the Community Rebuilds organization, a great bunch of folks who build energy-efficient, sustainable housing for low-income families. I played in front of their garage in the backyard, with a campfire, Christmas lights, and around forty amazing people as company. It was a beautiful evening, and one of the best crowds I have ever had the privilege of playing for. Moab, I shall return, you were amazing. Thanks for listening to my long-winded stories between songs, I probably talked more than played, but hey, you gave me the PBR.

Stay tuned for the conclusion, which will really mostly be photos from my excursion the next day to Arches National Park, before I drove back to Denver…

So I left you in Centennial, WY, having crashed there with my buddy Jay for the night. After breakfast at the local greasy spoon, I thanked Jay for the incredible hospitality and drove up the mountain a little ways to get a morning hike in. I hiked for only an hour or so (I had to get on the road to Utah), but it was a beautiful and quiet hike, I never ran into another human. Check out this cactus, bet you didn’t know they had those in Wyoming, eh?

It was time to hit the dusty trail to Ogden, Utah, a quick six-hour drive across most of the rest of Wyoming (file under #fail in the planning column, John). Jay had given me directions to the interstate, which winded through about twenty miles of dirt back roads, causing me to question my direction many times. Finally got to I-80, set the cruise control, put on some Drive-By Truckers, and got this journey underway…

That last picture was taken just before arriving in Ogden. I had to pull off the road to take a picture of this truly bizarre rock formation. It is aptly named “Devil’s Slide”.

Whew, finally arrived in Ogden. At least the drive had been (mostly) pretty. I was playing that night at the Slackwater Pub with Brett Turner, a musician to whom I had been introduced to via the internet, but not yet in person. The food at Slackwater was delicious, and they really treat their artists great, beautiful people. If you find yourself in Ogden I would highly recommend it.

Brett played a great set of upbeat outlaw-country. Well, I’m not sure that he would classify it as that, but it had all the edgy balls-y-ness, I loved it. Brett is one hell of a nice dude, as well. He put me up for the night at his place, and we went out for some drinks that night. Ogden seemed like a really cool town, an old-time railroad stopping place steeped with sinful, gangster (Al Capone!) history. Unfortunately, nowadays the state of Utah likes to sell 3.2% beer and water down your drinks. Evidence: I drank four whiskey cokes at the bar we went to and didn’t really feel anything.

The point here, though, is that I really enjoyed talking music with Brett that night, and the next morning over breakfast before getting a move on. A totally devoted artist, and I love his business-minded ideas, two-thumbs up, check out his music.

On to Moab the next day, but first, I do have one serious Ogden regret. I didn’t get to visit The Sandlot. I think every boy who grew up in the nineties would list this as one of their favorite movies of all time, *sigh*, next time.

Alright, about to take the jump back into blogging, ready…

GO!

Ok, some of you (probably not many) may remember my old blog, There Is Nothing That The Road Will Not Heal…, that served to document travels, post music I was into, etc. Yea, I got bad at keeping it up, and stopped posting altogether a little over a year ago. Go back and check it out if you want to see some travel/tour photos and whatnot from a few years ago.

Now, I want to do a re-boot with a different location, right here on johnstatz.com. Shorter web address, contained at one spot, etc., seems like a good idea. I was inspired to get back on the blogging train by my girlfriend and artist-extraordinaire Heidi Keyes. Her blog, The Outlaw Process, is incredibly well-written and entertaining, and probably better than this blog will be, so you should read hers first.

So I figured that I would pick up where I left off: some travel/tour blogging. At the beginning of May I took a four day trip through Wyoming and Utah to play shows in Laramie, Ogden, and Moab. Yea, it was a pretty huge journey for three shows, but it was also a good excuse to get out of Denver, do some hiking, and it was therapeutic, the road always is.

The picture at the top of the post was taken somewhere on the drive into Wyoming on Hwy. 287 between Fort Collins and Laramie. Might have been while I was still in Colorado, might have been in Wyoming, can’t really remember. It was a gorgeous drive punctuated by some scattered rain, and I was excited for some good times in Wyoming. Last summer I played a pair of shows in Laramie and Centennial and had a blast hiking and camping in the area. Needless to say after a few hours on the road I was excited to stretch my legs and get in some hiking before the show in Laramie that evening.

I figured, “hey, there is a big hill-like formation just northeast of Laramie, there most be places to get out and hike around there”, so I began to drive up what was called Roger Canyon Road. The weather was still looking rainy and not exactly the best for hiking, but I continued on down the road past some interesting-looking caves until I hit the gravel. I drove a bit further down the gravel road, having not yet found any trailheads…

The road started getting a bit rough for my poor mini-van, and the trailhead search wasn’t looking anymore promising, so I figured I’d turn back and check out those caves.

The caves turned out to be seriously creepy, probably more so in the cloud-covered light. As I walked up to the one in the picture I found tons of clay pigeon shards, and the inside was littered with empty beer cans and a few dirty sleeping bags. It looked like a mixed-use hangout spot for hunters and high school kids alike. And then I saw this…

Maybe this makes me a sissy, but, being the only human in sight, this + bullet shells on the ground + eerie lighting and caves + a memory of a previous outside-of-Laramie-horror got my move on back to town.

Played my gig that night at Coal Creek Coffee Company, a cool little coffee shop that always treats me super well. Also, my Wyoming buddy J. Shogren joined me on the mandolin. Jay is a great singer/songwriter who I met and played with last summer in Centennial, WY. His band J. Shogren Shanghai’d has a well-done/hilarious/awesome new music video out, dig it.

After the early Coal Creek show was done, Jay kindly invited me out to his place in Centennial, only a half-hour drive. How could I refuse? Centennial is a true western mountain town of 100 citizens, the kind of place you’d expect to feel like an outsider (you know, the record-skip type) but are in fact welcomed immediately. We played the late open mic at one of the couple of bars in town, had a blast, and some old local drunk dude told me at least three different times how he had to drop out of college because he went to too many concerts. I also heard him tell the same tale to two or three other fortunate/unfortunate individuals.

We retired back to Jay’s beautiful woodland home, stayed up for a bit drinking Dale’s Pale Ale and discussing the best Dylan albums, Prince’s rise to fame, and who can remember what else… It was a good night. As always, Wyoming never lets you down. The next day would be on to Utah for me, but more on that later.

Thanks for reading my novel, more to come!

John