I don't stay in hotels terribly often, and I suppose it had been a while since the last time I had a free hotel breakfast, but this one was pretty great! They had the usual fare (bagels, pastries, yogurt, coffee, and juice), but they also had a couple of surprises: hard boiled eggs and a waffle making station! It was awesome!
Ahem, anyway... After a full and gloriously free breakfast, we hit the highway and headed north into Wyoming.
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect out of Wyoming. Was it going to be boring like Kansas? Mountainous and awesome? Some sort of weird, half desert? As it turns out, it was a little bit of everything, except boring. Initially, near Cheyenne and about halfway across the state, Wyoming is covered in a flat, rolling plain with mountains looming on the horizon. It looked a little something like this (and yes, I did have a wicked road sunburn):
It's not so hard to imagine vast herds of buffalo grazing, or cattle being shepherded along by cowboys to their summer pastures. It was pretty easy to get lost in all of the romance of the "wild west". We were in it! And to be honest, it was pretty gall-darn beautiful.
As we headed west, closer to the mountains, the landscape became more dry and rocky. Little foothills started to crop up around us as we slipped through a gap in the Rockies.
On our way through these little foothills, we started to see billboards for a place called Little America. They had 50 cent ice cream cones! Free WiFi! Fresh fruit and souvenirs! Marble showers! It sounded like a pretty great tourist trap, and I was going to need gas, so we decided to check it out.
Little America was like a little oasis of civilization in the vast stretches of nothingness that spread out around it. It was a small complex of brick buildings: a gas station, a truck stop, a hotel, and some little cabins for rent. When we pulled up to the gas station, our car was nearly assaulted by a window washing teenager (he actually made me jump ... I wasn't expecting it at all). He was very friendly, asked us where we were from, where we were going, and made some small talk. I filled up the tank, and we headed inside.
As it turns out, Little America was a tourist trap, but not as awesome a trap as I was expecting. They had the usual kitschy souvenirs (wolves and eagles painted with Native American designs, expensive local snack items for the road, decorative knives and belt buckles) and a vast selection of the convenience store food and beverages. It was pretty boring, as it turns out. But they had a little hot dog stand/restaurant, so we grabbed a couple of 'dogs and sat down for lunch.
Okay, only one more bit from Wyoming, and then it's on to Utah. The bigger foothills (we were listening to podcasts, so ignore the audio):
Much like Wyoming, I didn't really know what to expect from Utah. Other than creepy Mormon billboards all over welcoming home "Elder So-and-So", which we saw plenty of. Going into Utah, the mountains became huge, towering beasts of red rock. The road wound through them for quite some time. From the border all the way to the outskirts of Salt Lake City, the views were pretty breathtaking. See for yourself!
We never really got into SLC, just close enough to see a few of those creepy Mormon billboards I mentioned before. North of the city, we drove through a scrubby little forest and the land started to flatten out. It was on into Idaho we went!
Yes, Idaho. As I look through our collection of pictures and videos, I realize we didn't take any pictures or videos of Idaho. Because ... well, Idaho is boring for the most part. Flat and treeless as Kansas, except for the little bits of cool canyon carved out by the Snake River that the highway brought us close to. It made for a pretty painful last three hours of a very long day of driving.
There was quite a bit of construction as we neared Boise, but traffic was light. By the time we rolled into town, we were once again exhausted and hungry. We checked in, grabbed some fast food dinner, and passed out knowing that tomorrow was the big day!
No comments:
Post a Comment