Western Road Trip '15

Good-bye, Winter!
(A double click on any photo makes it screen size.)

Day #1  Minneapolis to North Platte, Nebraska.  Directions haven't changed.  Drive south on I-35.  Turn right on I-80.  Stop in North Platte.  No snow to speak of in Iowa and Nebraska.  I like winter brown.  Uneventful day, the best kind on a long road trip.   All three of us make it in and out of North Platte in good health - a first!

Nebraska Unadorned

Day #2  North Platte to Grand Junction, Colorado.  A five hundred mile piece of cake after our big 650-mile first day.  Another departure in the pre-dawn darkness.  The black sky softens behind us as we reach the Colorado border.  Crop land becomes grazing land for cattle, who appear as black dots on the white hills, bold flecks of contrast in the faint light of early dawn.  Western sky in front of us a canvas of pastels.  Over my shoulder, fierce oranges and reds.  Sunrise at seven-twenty.  We are definitely in the West now.

Crossing the Rockies past Denver we encounter a traffic jam!  Cars as far as we can see.  We cover twenty miles in two hours.  At least the scenery is stunning.

Grand Junction an upscale city with wine bars and French restaurants, but we're too tired to do the town.  Settle for La Quinta's outdoor spa under the light of a full moon.  We fill the tank at $1.94/gal.

Grand Junction, CO, facing east at sunset

Day #3  Grand Junction to Summerlin, Nevada.  My favorite segment of this journey every year.  Leaving sophisticated Grand Junction behind in the dark, we streak into the empty, solemn, wild grandeur of Utah.  A two hundred eighty-mile meditation. 

Highway Department sign warns, "Eagles on Highway."  None today.  Towns - Lone Tree, Silt, Sulpher, Gypsum.  No Services.  Carol remarks that we are leaving the clouds behind us.  Indeed a cover of brilliant, unbroken blue everywhere.

Highway Department signs seemingly every five miles - "View Site."  All of Utah is a View Site.  Carol works on the NY Times crossword.  I drive, nursing a Starbuck's dark roast and feasting on the one-hundred-eighty degree view.  We cross the Green River.

Sunrise in the Utah Wilderness, the last of the day's clouds

At the 170 mile mark, Carol takes over driving.  Open spaces give way to steep, forested mountains that crowd the highway.  Driving, I could take in the big picture.  Freed of responsibility, I can zoom in on astounding details.  A riot of animal tracks on a hillside.  Crows feeding on a large carcass.  A battered shed, defeated by time and the elements.  In the forest, a small, white wooden cross, festooned with a Christmas wreath - lonely splash of color.  Fifteen miles to Salina.  Now tire tracks through the snow in the forest, from nowhere to nowhere.  Steep, snow-covered canyon walls.  Then, improbably, several miles of brown landscape.  A hawk on a bare tree branch.

Salina breaks the spell.  Days Inn, Motel 6, Shell, Conoco, BP, McDonalds, Subway.  At 11:30 we turn south on I-15, 220 miles to Las Vegas.  It seems as if the tawdriness of Sin City reaches all the way up here.  The biggest automobile/RV graveyard I have ever seen.  Billboards.  Dilapidated buildings.  Sad-looking retirement communities.  Signs of a hardscrabble life.  The beautiful Utah wilderness is still out there, a half mile beyond ragged human enterprise.

Then, Cedar City, Utah, home of an annual Shakespeare Festival.  Signs for Cedar Breaks National Monument and Bryce Canyon National Park.  I've been to those places, and they have left their mark on me.  Thirty miles north of St. George, the thermometer reads 35 degrees, and the hills are brown.  We have left winter behind until next year.

St. George, Utah, where we spent a night two years ago.  The Latter Day Saints' white temple gleams in the bright sun.  Palm trees.  Magnificent, erect cedars ring a small country cemetery.  And...
Baseball!  Not one, but two games in progress on green ball fields.

We touch Arizona for thirty minutes, descending into a canyon, domineering vertical rock cliffs squeezing the interstate tight.  We round a bend and, in an instant, are spit out into the vast desert.  Forty degrees.  Forty-five.  Fifty.  We switch drivers for the last time.  Coatless, I walk Rowdie, who is intent on investigating new and strange scents.

Summerlin, close to Red Rock Canyon, too close to Las Vegas.  Hard for Rowdie to find an unpaved patch on which to do what needs to be done.  We arrive early enough to drive the thirteen-mile loop through the red rocks and to take one hike.

A tad too late to catch the "red" at Red Rock Canyon...

...but in time for the moonrise!

 Day #4  Summerlin to San Luis Obispo.  We can see the finish line.  Just want to get there.  We stop for lunch in springtime in a park in Wasco, California.  A real treat - lunch sitting still, absent the thrum of tires on asphalt.  Five guys taking batting practice on the ball field.  A batter, a pitcher, three outfielders.  Number three positions himself beyond the outfield fence; these guys can hit!  Kids rolling themselves dizzy down hills of green grass.  No need for a sled to have fun.  A roller park nearby, the click of skateboard wheels on concrete hillocks.

San Luis Obispo!  Our first stop is the neighborhood coop for a bottle of local organic red wine.  Later, a break from unpacking, we sit in our sunny yard and sip.  The road is behind us.  What adventures await?