As one who doesn't travel often (and generally looks unfavorably on long car rides), I will say that I'm glad Trevor plucked me out of the rain here to drive back with him from Denver to home. I have seen some things that I may not see again the rest of my life, and being a vigilant passenger with a camera allowed me capture some of them. The general emptiness and vast fields are a stark contrast with the city and suburbs that I'm used to. But as barren as the Utah prairies or desolate as the Rockies were, it was interesting to see all that different terrain and the different ways that some Americans [read: non-city folk] live.
When driving through the Rocky mountains it changed from hard sheet rocks to evergreen forest to snow to crumply red stone and back to large sheet rocks, each transition seeming to take place in a matter of minutes. Denver & Salt Lake City are generally flat areas. Similar to when I visited Sister at Notre Dame, I'm still not used to having to not traverse up a hill to go from one block to the next. Salt Lake City was completely barren as Trevor and I walked through it at 11PM on a Monday night; we probably encircled (and walk partly through) forty square blocks around and outside the financial district on foot and saw maybe fifteen people out on the street. Salt Lake City also seemed to have uncommonly wide sidewalks -- just something I noticed. However I did learn that jalapeño beef jerky bought from gas stations does not agree with the workings of my bowels.
We blew through Boise (actually, technically we got caught in rush hour traffic there) and made no stops. Because I was engaged in navigating the car around semi-aggressive drivers, I didn't have a chance to look out the side windows much and didn't get a chance to see Boise's downtown skyscrapers. Maybe because of the heavy rain or my diverted focus, but based on what I saw I don't think we missed much by not stopping. While I knew that there was no sales tax in Oregon, I learned that gas stations are full service there and the only action needed from the driver was to roll down the window a sliver to slip the credit card through.
I learned something that night as we made our way into Washington; Trevor really really really dislikes Country music. We were in the home stretch -- but it wasn't made easy. Heavy rain/light-medium downpours harassed us from Yakima and all the way home. The worst came during our time through the Snoqualmie Pass where blinking DOT signs warned us of puddles in the highway. Despite the 70 MPH speed limit Trevor cautiously and smartly took most of it at 50 MPH, our tires still launching behind us a veritable "rooster tail" (as Trevor called it) in their wake. Regardless of what the GPS unit told us, because of the dark and all the rain I didn't really feel like I was close to the end of the trip until we hit Issaquah. After that, it was as if we were driving home from Costco. The adventure was over, and we had returned.
Check out the Slideshow of most of the pictures that I took from the trip. Or you can get to the actual Picasa Album by clicking the link at the bottom left of the Slideshow window, or any of the pictures above. Almost all of the photos have been geotagged to the best of my ability, so if you wanted to you can follow along on the journey.
When driving through the Rocky mountains it changed from hard sheet rocks to evergreen forest to snow to crumply red stone and back to large sheet rocks, each transition seeming to take place in a matter of minutes. Denver & Salt Lake City are generally flat areas. Similar to when I visited Sister at Notre Dame, I'm still not used to having to not traverse up a hill to go from one block to the next. Salt Lake City was completely barren as Trevor and I walked through it at 11PM on a Monday night; we probably encircled (and walk partly through) forty square blocks around and outside the financial district on foot and saw maybe fifteen people out on the street. Salt Lake City also seemed to have uncommonly wide sidewalks -- just something I noticed. However I did learn that jalapeño beef jerky bought from gas stations does not agree with the workings of my bowels. We blew through Boise (actually, technically we got caught in rush hour traffic there) and made no stops. Because I was engaged in navigating the car around semi-aggressive drivers, I didn't have a chance to look out the side windows much and didn't get a chance to see Boise's downtown skyscrapers. Maybe because of the heavy rain or my diverted focus, but based on what I saw I don't think we missed much by not stopping. While I knew that there was no sales tax in Oregon, I learned that gas stations are full service there and the only action needed from the driver was to roll down the window a sliver to slip the credit card through. I learned something that night as we made our way into Washington; Trevor really really really dislikes Country music. We were in the home stretch -- but it wasn't made easy. Heavy rain/light-medium downpours harassed us from Yakima and all the way home. The worst came during our time through the Snoqualmie Pass where blinking DOT signs warned us of puddles in the highway. Despite the 70 MPH speed limit Trevor cautiously and smartly took most of it at 50 MPH, our tires still launching behind us a veritable "rooster tail" (as Trevor called it) in their wake. Regardless of what the GPS unit told us, because of the dark and all the rain I didn't really feel like I was close to the end of the trip until we hit Issaquah. After that, it was as if we were driving home from Costco. The adventure was over, and we had returned.Check out the Slideshow of most of the pictures that I took from the trip. Or you can get to the actual Picasa Album by clicking the link at the bottom left of the Slideshow window, or any of the pictures above. Almost all of the photos have been geotagged to the best of my ability, so if you wanted to you can follow along on the journey.
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