Roadtrip to NYC: Oakland, CA to Colorado Springs, CO
Oakland, CA to Elko, NV on the first day takes from 3:00pm to 3:15am covering 510 miles. We did stop in Davis, CA for three hours to meet up with Kim.
Elko, NV to Colorado Springs, CO on the second day takes from 1:00pm to 3:45am. 840 miles, or the first of two long days. We stopped for about 30 minutes in Salt Lake City, UT, where the greeters at the Mormon High Temple promptly scared us away.
Day 1 is a combination of efficiency and bad timing kicking our butts. We depart Oakland as soon as my flight lands at 3pm, because we're reluctant to waste precious daylight sitting at home. Naturally, this places us in rush hour, which sucks. We make it up to Fairfield before hunger gets us, then as soon as we leave Fairfield, I remember Kim's up in Davis, and we haven't seen her in a long time-- so we stop in Davis again. Oops, poor (or rather, no) planning there! We enjoy a 2nd dinner for a few hours, then haul off to Reno. Climbing up I-80 East is much nicer in the summer than it is in the snowy winter, but hitting Reno at 11pm only makes us realize how much farther we have to go-- 289 miles! Ouch!
Our first day's introduction to long drives is thus a mild one, but still a startling awakening to the realm of the 500+ mile drive. We being to stock up on snacks beyond just water and chewing gum somewhere in the middle of Nevada, finally find out that Elko is the biggest small redneck town ever with a dozen motels, a Walmart, and a ~3 mile long main drag, sleep for a few hours, then eat lunch at King Buffet. We expect an American place, then as we enter, the $5.99 is for cheap oily Chinese food. **scared** We stick to safe things, buy more snacks at Albertsons, then hightail out of there at 1pm.
Day 2's first leg is 230 miles to Salt Lake City, UT. Western Utah is home to Bonneville Salt Flats and maybe three trees. Arriving in Salt Lake City, we think about dinner, since it's the last big city til Denver, many hours away. As it turns out, SLC is a much smaller place than we had envisioned, and as we head into the central city, the signs of devotion to the Mormom faith are overwhelming. Two Californians wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sunglasses among a sea of black slacks/white-collared-shirts/ties (for the men) and conservative dresses (for the women) are immediately zeroed in on as potential converts by an army of greeters at the High Temple, and the welcome is smothering.
Eeek. We do two laps around downtown SLC looking for food, too, and find nothing of interest, so we leave immediately to the only ~20 miles of interesting driving in Utah, towards Park City (ski resort! woohoo!), and then out into Wyoming. While Wyoming has modestly interesting rock formations and is where Thornburg the Dog is buried (!), there just isn't much there. Dinner in Little America Wyoming-- quite possibly the most heavily advertised motel-that-wants-to-be-a-resort west of the Mississippi-- is underwhelming but decent, then we drop the hammer to Cheyenne and can keep it hammered til we turn south on I-25 for Denver and then Colorado Springs. Entering Colorado we slow down to more prudent speeds, although people are still hauling butt as we get near Denver.
The weather is decent and the roads aren't bad. Denver is the largest city in the Rockies by far, and its multilevel freeway interchanges remind us of home. =P After a bit of a fiasco finding gas, we encounter pouring rain at 3:00am and pull into theBooker's palace about 3:45am and after 840 miles driving...
Generous thanks to Booker for putting an old friend up... it seems that he and his family are doing well, and their 4000 sq.ft. view-of-mountains home is very nice. He even feeds us (thanks!), then we make tracks at about 3pm.
