Day 2: Us v. Utah

Compare now Day 1 to Day 2. After a long night’s rest and a leisurely breakfast at a café in downtown Evanston, we headed out to Cedaredge, CO, which required heading first west to Salt Lake City, UT, then south and a little west until finally doubling back east to our destination – about a 9 ¼ hour drive for us.

The ten miles or so leading into Salt Lake City run steeply downhill, which is trouble when you’re carrying all your world’s possessions, and your car, behind you. On the advice of Click and Clack, the Tappit brothers, we downshifted rather than riding our brakes. If you’ve never done this, or if you’re not afraid of loud noises, you may not appreciate the significance of this. When a large truck traveling 70 mph downhill shifts into second gear, its engine suddenly begins to scream with such anguish you are sure its life must be now too painful to endure and that it will blow itself up rather than continue another second.

Then we hit the highway around the city. First off, the roads may or may not have been paved with cobblestones painted to look like asphalt, but they certainly felt like it. Second, Utah drivers, assuming them all Mormon, are so anxious to get to Heaven that they drive with an absolute lack of self-concern. Besides the entering and exiting people trying to run into us, most of the lane-changers were trying to run into one another. In a space of about ten miles we witnessed no less than five near-fatal near-accidents and a slew of close-calls that, cumulatively, created about the most stressful driving conditions I’ve ever experienced.

We picked up I-70, which cuts directly east across the state through a landscape more deserving of the modifier “desolate” than most I’ve seen. Stopping at Devil’s Canyon viewpoint, I expected to see a map situating us somewhere between Nowhere and The Edge of the World. I remarked to my wife that it seemed this land was a place where God just went nuts with his most dramatic natural forces, thinking, “there’s no one who’s gonna want to live here, anyway,” to which she pointed out that no one did in fact live there, there were only those fool enough to drive through it.

Our constant goal was Green River, whose name promised an oasis of green shade trees, cool river breezes, and gasoline. In fact it was two gas stations in the midst of the desert, with no river in sight, and no green taller than my ankle. As we approached the exit it seemed to begin raining, but in fact it was bugs. When I stepped out of the truck at the gas station I could see swarms of mutant ant-flies crawling all over the ground and pumps, and flying all over our heads. After filling up we said, “This place is infested with some God-sent damnable plague. Let’s get outta here.” And we did.

But when we pulled up to my Grandma’s house, we had cashews and mostaccioli and margaritas (an unusual combo, I know) awaiting us, as well as my grandmother, aunt and uncle, who warmly welcomed us, and hence Day 2 closed on us once again comfortably abed and peaceful.