Road Trip - Day 2: Wasatch Range

One of our major concerns for this trip was our two cats. Though curious and adventurous at home and around the immediate landscaped alley siding against the long side of our old apartment building, they never picked up an interest for climbing aboard a vehicle and spending a few hours on a Sunday afternoon drive. Instead, they associated car rides with vet visits, which were infrequent but regular enough to mark their memory with the images of needles and barking dogs in a crowded waiting room. Of the two, Bollito suffered the most to the point he was physically unable to hold his liquids; it was not surprising to find him caked up in a dried mixture of cat litter and pee inside his kennel after our first day on the road. On the evening of the 5th, we gave Bollito a bath, washed his kennel, and pampered him with hugs and kisses. I guess this old grandma recipe worked since Bollito made the rest of the trip inside a dry and fresh kitty kennel. Let us not forget Cookie! She was a champ too all the way to DC.

The second leg of the trip involved driving north along the Wasatch Range and cut the mountains through a gorge just east of Salt Lake City. The scenery changed dramatically as we drove east while descending in altitude toward Wyoming. From an arid plateau, the landscape turned greener and rugged reminiscing of the Swiss Alps. This alpine impression was further echoed by road signs routing skiers to the local resorts. Please check out the pictures and click on them for a larger view.

While on the road, one can become quite disconnected from news events. Fortunately, we freshened up on the state of a affairs from a glance at a national security update posted on the front door of a local gas station.

Wyoming border, hooray!!!



Juan is making sure the strap securing the front wheels to the vehicle transport does not slip off again...ouch.



Check out the size of this windmill!


Guess what were we racing for several dozen miles? A carrier transporting radioactive waste.

Road Trip - Day 1: Desert Zone

We hit the road on 9/5/07. It did not take long before the landscape turned from an urban composite to a vast desert modestly populated by tumble weed and Joshua trees.

We approached the Nevada border early in the afternoon. To prevent the engine from over heating, we agreed to keep the AC unit turned off and the windows rolled down. To our surprise, the temperature in the cabin was quite comfortable.

The city of Joan became our first stop in Nevada where we checked on the kitties (they were doing fine) and refueled the truck (for economy car owners, it takes some getting use to accept the price meter won't stop at $35). We also indulged in ice cream sandwiches, yum.

Rita and I are not into gambling, but we were not immune to the peculiar charm of Las Vegas. Maybe some day we will return to the city in the desert and stay at the New York New York Hotel. Wait a minute! We are now living 3 hours away from New York and Broadway, why would we want to go back to Vegas!?!

We drove past Vegas in the middle of the afternoon, and pressed forward to our checkpoint for the day: Cedar City, UT. As the sun was setting on the western horizon near the Arizona border, we stumbled upon a green valley irrigated by a healthy meandering creek.

Late in the evening, we sighted the state sign for Utah. Please note the picture is out of focus; it was an intentional effect to give you a sense of how tired our eyes were.