Today was a very interesting day...both travel wise and otherwise. We left Las Vegas at about 10am after breakfast at McD. We drove thru NE Nevada, into northern Arizona for a short stretch and then entered Utah from the south. Except for that lousy spell of rain from the Bay Area to LA, we have had exceptional weather, almost a bit too hot for me. For a while we have been telling people we are driving thru America, but really what we have found is that we are really "experiencing" America. Every city/state is so different and each so beautiful in its own way. We left the glitz and overdone glamour of Las Vegas to experience true natural beauty in Utah. The scenery is absolutely spectacular! The vast expanses of land are dotted with these mammoth red sandstone like mountains, each with unique shapes....almost as if someone has chiseled these artistic creations out of the red stone.
We entered Bryce Canyon at about 2pm and for those of you who have not been here, it is a MUST SEE EXPERIENCE!!! Having lived in the Pacific NW for so long i thought i had seen all the beauty nature has to offer, but this is really something. As artists we spend hours trying to blend colors in harmonious ways in paintings, applying color wheel theory and principles, but all you have to do is to look at nature to see all colors existing side by side and working together beautifully....Red stone mountains, verdant evergreens, white snow, limestone rocks, gray iron ore all coexisting peacefully and creating stunning landscapes against a brilliant blue sky. Very reluctantly we left Bryce at 4pm and drove thru more incredible scenery to Moab, about 250 miles to the east. I forgot to mention the very tame squirrels that came right up to us looking for food....they were so cute! We did some amazing speed today, the speed limit in Utah is 75 mph, and the only time we had to slow down to 40mph was when passing thru the small one horse towns, and that too, by the time we slowed down to 40, we had passed the town!!! Tomorrow morning we plan to head out early to do the mile and a half trek to see the Arches.
Couple of incidents today....sometime this evening, R and I decided to switch driving duty...like we do every 3 hours or so. I had been driving, so i stopped and got ready to slide over to the passenger seat, and R got out and came around the back of the car to the driver seat...turns out i had put the gear in "Reverse" instead of "Park" and the car almost amputated his foot as he was coming around the back. It was a real close miss...whew! Then incident #2 - we were pretty low on gas about 40 miles away from Moab, so we thought we would fill up at a city called Crescent Junction, about 30 miles from Moab.....well CJ turned out to be a ghost town that once existed...we know that because the deserted gas station there had a price of $1.69 a gallon for gas and there was not a soul in sight. By then the red light had come on followed by all sorts of beeping sounds and a green light too......we were sure we would run out before we got to Moab...and to top it all we were on a really lonely stretch of freeway with no one else passing by and it was about 7.30pm....fortunately about 10 miles before Moab, we came across a gas station...close call #2!!!
Then another goof.....i wanted to check in and get into the hotel by 8pm to catch A.Idol finale....but by the time we did it was almost 8.30pm. No sweat, i thought....i'll catch the last hour. Well.....I forgot Utah is an hour ahead so really it was 9.30pm and it was all over!!! I think their TV programming is different...oh well, live and learn!!
Here are more pics taken today
Travel tip - When travelling by road across the country, be aware of time zones and factor them into your travel times so you don't miss TV shows like American Idol....ok, so maybe that wasn't so useful but here's one: Get a National Parks Pass if you are planning to do more than one US National park, you'll save a ton of money!! An annual pass is $50 and typically the entrance fee for one car at each park is anywhere from $10 to $20.
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