Leaving Moab, I figure that after having hiked from sun-up to sun-down I should at least try to make it into Colorado before stopping for the night. After all, it's still a two day drive from Utah to Minnesota, and I wanted to be able to get a decent night's sleep before being to work at 4:30 am on Monday.
The drive is pretty uneventful through the rest of Utah and the first part of Colorado. The most intersting part is how military the town names sound (Rifle, Parachute, Battlesomethingorother, etc.). I'm part way through the mountains when I see the first clouds coming over the moon. I'd heard on the radio that more snow was expected, and I really hoped that I could make it through the Rockies before it hit. I don't.
The first snow starts just past Glenwood Springs. By the time I reach Vail Pass commercial vehicles are lined up for miles along the shoulder putting on snow chains. I'm already further than I'd planned to go (thought I'd be bushed around Grand Junction), but I do not want to get stuck up here in a snow storm. I'm driving close to the speed limit. As the storm gets worse, this means that I'm going progressively faster and faster than everyone else. By the time I get to the next pass (Loderman Pass or some such), there's a couple of inches on the ground, and driving is getting interesting- though nowhere near as bad as Nebraska/Wyoming had been. Coming down the mountains into Denver I'm dodging out of the teeth of the storm, and I'm into the clear. I hear about the avalanche the next day. While it was twelve hours after I'd passed, and not on the interstate but on a state highway, I did drive right past the area. Interesting...
I gas up outside Denver. Now that I'm already through the mountains, and the latter part of the driving got the adrenaline flowing, I figure that I might as well keep going. The rest of the drive is pretty uneventful, except for the part where I hit a blown out tire at 85 mph. Again, adrenaline, and more driving. I'm almost to Kearny, Nebraska, before I'm tired enough to pull off. I rearrange the junk in my car before going to bed, and pull out the cooler. I realize that I'd forgotten about the second package of venison burger in there. I'm not going into details, but I've decided to throw the cooler away...
I wake up in the morning, and keep going. I'm somewhat chagrined that I could've stayed out another day- I'll be back Saturday night instead of Sunday. I coudn't have expected to be up for hiking for ten hours and then driving for ten more, though, and it will just give me a day to relax. The rest of the trip is uneventful, though listening to some talk radio show I do hear about a book that I decide to pick-up and read. It's about reconciling science with God, which happened to be one of the many topics I mulled over while driving. Impeccable timing, though the book is proving less aligned to my thoughts than the author had made it sound in the interview.
I'm back in Minnesota by sunset, and back to the cities a little before seven o' clock. I grab some of my stuff, head up, and begin The Task. You see, having flown solo the whole time, I hadn't really seen the need to shower. After all, there's no one else to be bothered by my funk, my nose doesn't hardly work in the best of circumstances, and just finding a place to shower would've cost money and been a huge pain in the rear. So guess what? My hair is one giant mess of tangles. It takes me an hour in the shower to get them all out, and I end up pulling out no small amount of hair. If I ever go that long again, my hair's going into a pony tail day one and not coming back out.
And that's the trip. Of course, there's gonna be at least one post of reminisces and ruminations, but for what I actually did, and for the pictures that actually turned out, that's it. Oh, and here's one last picture of me from that last night of driving. 2 AM in Nebraska (I think I'm driving past a turkey factory at the time, or at least that's what it smelled like). I swear, there should be a law against being this sexy....
The drive is pretty uneventful through the rest of Utah and the first part of Colorado. The most intersting part is how military the town names sound (Rifle, Parachute, Battlesomethingorother, etc.). I'm part way through the mountains when I see the first clouds coming over the moon. I'd heard on the radio that more snow was expected, and I really hoped that I could make it through the Rockies before it hit. I don't.
The first snow starts just past Glenwood Springs. By the time I reach Vail Pass commercial vehicles are lined up for miles along the shoulder putting on snow chains. I'm already further than I'd planned to go (thought I'd be bushed around Grand Junction), but I do not want to get stuck up here in a snow storm. I'm driving close to the speed limit. As the storm gets worse, this means that I'm going progressively faster and faster than everyone else. By the time I get to the next pass (Loderman Pass or some such), there's a couple of inches on the ground, and driving is getting interesting- though nowhere near as bad as Nebraska/Wyoming had been. Coming down the mountains into Denver I'm dodging out of the teeth of the storm, and I'm into the clear. I hear about the avalanche the next day. While it was twelve hours after I'd passed, and not on the interstate but on a state highway, I did drive right past the area. Interesting...
I gas up outside Denver. Now that I'm already through the mountains, and the latter part of the driving got the adrenaline flowing, I figure that I might as well keep going. The rest of the drive is pretty uneventful, except for the part where I hit a blown out tire at 85 mph. Again, adrenaline, and more driving. I'm almost to Kearny, Nebraska, before I'm tired enough to pull off. I rearrange the junk in my car before going to bed, and pull out the cooler. I realize that I'd forgotten about the second package of venison burger in there. I'm not going into details, but I've decided to throw the cooler away...
I wake up in the morning, and keep going. I'm somewhat chagrined that I could've stayed out another day- I'll be back Saturday night instead of Sunday. I coudn't have expected to be up for hiking for ten hours and then driving for ten more, though, and it will just give me a day to relax. The rest of the trip is uneventful, though listening to some talk radio show I do hear about a book that I decide to pick-up and read. It's about reconciling science with God, which happened to be one of the many topics I mulled over while driving. Impeccable timing, though the book is proving less aligned to my thoughts than the author had made it sound in the interview.
I'm back in Minnesota by sunset, and back to the cities a little before seven o' clock. I grab some of my stuff, head up, and begin The Task. You see, having flown solo the whole time, I hadn't really seen the need to shower. After all, there's no one else to be bothered by my funk, my nose doesn't hardly work in the best of circumstances, and just finding a place to shower would've cost money and been a huge pain in the rear. So guess what? My hair is one giant mess of tangles. It takes me an hour in the shower to get them all out, and I end up pulling out no small amount of hair. If I ever go that long again, my hair's going into a pony tail day one and not coming back out.
And that's the trip. Of course, there's gonna be at least one post of reminisces and ruminations, but for what I actually did, and for the pictures that actually turned out, that's it. Oh, and here's one last picture of me from that last night of driving. 2 AM in Nebraska (I think I'm driving past a turkey factory at the time, or at least that's what it smelled like). I swear, there should be a law against being this sexy....
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