Today was another big driving day. One of the tent campers said that the park rangers had driven trucks along the perimeter of the camp while beating a large sheet of metal to drive away a grizzly bear around one in the morning. We will be glad to get out of bear country. We packed out and headed south by 9:30, our typical departure time (it takes us about 2 hours to shower, eat breakfast and break down the trailer).
Eli is getting a little tired of the picture taking. After driving slowly south through another 10 miles of road construction (very bumpy dirt road), we stopped at a turnoff to get a family picture in front of the Grand Tetons while the morning sun painted them up. He told us all that Hell is a bus ride to Heaven – with the Devil as the driver, stopping to take pictures at a billion places along the way. We got a chuckle and he got no more picture stops the rest of the 560 miles to Moab, Utah (although Vicki did take a few out of the window).
After celebrating two high mountain pass crossings from the Black Hills to Yellowstone, today we took on five 7,000 plus passes – with style. After we passed through beautiful Jackson (and got a precious few moments of WiFi connection time at a McDonald’s), Wyoming kissed us good-bye just south of Afton on Highway 89 at the 7,610 foot Salt River Pass. Then we crossed the southeast corner of Idaho, but not before the van pulled us across 7,000 foot Geneva Pass east of Montpelier. We crossed into Utah, drove south along Bear Lake on the Oregon Trail Historic Highway, got some gas at Garden City and climbed up 7,500 foot Bear Lake pass. Then just before we entered Brigham City, we crossed over the 7,000 foot Sardine Pass, and hit our first four lane highway in over 200 miles.
We drove south along I-15 along the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake, and hit 70 mph (the speed limit was 75) after averaging 40 mph for over five hours in the mountains. Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1989, Vicki and I drove our little Honda Accord for three weeks along I- 80 from San Diego to our next duty station in Newport, Rhode Island, stopping for a couple of hours in Salt Lake City to see the Mormon Tabernacle. Little did we know we would get to drive across 80 (on 15) on a hit summer a couple of decades later with Joy and Eli on a similar summer odyssey.
South of Provo, we turned southeast on Highway 6 and began a relentless 40 mile climb to 7,500 foot Soldier Summit, our last hill of the day. Along the way, we noticed that the air conditioning was not working any longer – and the temp was 101 degrees. We rolled down the windows and enjoyed the fresh, hot Utah mountain air! We were low on gas and when I say there was nothing for miles I mean that in the sense of the wild west. At the summit, we thanked God for a gas station and poured 24 gallons into the belly of the beast. But here’s a bit of travel trivia: we got the second best gas mileage of the trip (21 mpg) on this day of five mountain pass crossings. Lots of downhill plunges in second gear account for that number.
After supper at Wendy’s in Price, we drove the last 100 miles through a desolate, lonely country where houses were scarce and the landscape harsh and forbidding. A post card here says “Howdy from the Middle of Nowhere” and they’re not kidding. At the Arches National Park, we learned that this area was one of the last to be settled by non-native people – in the 1890’s – because it took us that long to find anyone crazy enough to want to live here.
We pulled into our campsite around 9:30, set up quickly as usual and crashed hard. It was 70 or so outside, and we had an idea the next day would be hot, but we were glad to be done with traveling for a couple of days.
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