| Day 4 - Laramie, WY to Ogden, Utah |
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| 6:30 AM I got up and started coffee -
and the coffee machine promptly sparked and blew up. The
generator, still running rough, was sending anywhere
from 92 to 160 volts to it, which is generally believed
to be not good. A quick trip into Wal-Mart for a
replacement. So far, we'd spent more time at Wal-Marts
across the country than anywhere else. Of course, we
parked overnight for free two out of three nights so far, I guess that's a
trade-off. We got back on I-80
after breakfast and coffee. The air was still noticeably
hazy and smoky. We noticed a fair number of
college kids in town, and it seemed odd that there would
be so many so soon before a school season. Maybe they
started school in July around here, don't know. The road
out of Laramie was fairly straight most of the time, and very slowly climbing up
towards the hills of Rawlins and Rock Springs. This
wasn't mountain country so much as high plateau,
although there were spots where we could see some good
sized hills out in the far distance. The smoke and haze
made it tough, though. About 10 AM, we stopped for a bit
at Fort Steele State Park, east of Rawlins. The sky had cleared, as the wind was now blowing directly out of the
north and across our bow as we drove. It was a
constant struggle to keep the ship pointed in the right
direction and not drift leftward across the lanes.
It was still very warm, hot and dusty. The rest stop was
a nice oasis of green amid the dusty brown surroundings
of the area. This part of Wyoming is very much unlike
the typical Yellowstone National Park idea of the state
- around here, it's flat, rocky scrub grassland, with
not much more than barbed wire fencing and train tracks to
break the monotony. You'd never know you were 7,000 feet
high. The prominent man-made features are oil
derricks, and huge wind turbines. This is oil shale country, and
unlike when I drove it 35 years ago, the price of energy
has made starting up the derricks worth while, and
building the wind farms to take advantage of the near
constant breeze now makes economic sense, I suppose. It
shouldn't be surprising what $100 a barrel oil, and
taxpayer subsidized wind energy will do for a region.
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Early morning Laramie Wal-Mart |
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I-80, west of Laramie. Another four hundred miles, and
we'll be in Utah |
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Fort Steele State Park |
| Rawlins passed by, notable only
because of a huge, miles-long freight train heading east
that we seemed to be passing for hours. Another two
hours and we were passing Rock Springs and then Green
River, a jumping off point for sport enthusiasts who
kayak down the Green River towards the Grand Canyon, or
into the Flaming Gorge area. Lots of dinosaur fossil
around here too, of course - the world's most complete
T-Rex was chipped out of the rocks around here
somewhere. The flat, treeless plains finally gave
way to some geology, and the large mesas and buttes of
southwestern Wyoming were finally visible. |
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Sinclair oil shale refinery |
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Rawlins |
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Central Wyoming |
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Bluffs near Green River |
| One of the places I'd remembered from
1975 was a huge truck-stop touristy place, called Little
America. Named in honor of the equally remote
research station in Antarctica, L/A began advertising 50
cent ice cream cones and other assorted reasons to stop
and spend some money, similar to the East Coast's South
of the Border. But when we got there, finally,
about 50 miles west of Green River and about as remote
as I'd remembered, it was a disappointment. When you're
looking forward to tourist schlock, a cleaned up,
whitewashed, tree-lined place just doesn't cut it.
They'd fixed it up so nice, it bore no resemblance to
the huge, tractor-trailers-everywhere 30-island gas
pumping station I'd thought of for so long. It was if
they'd taken the cheap serape off of Pedro and put him
in a tuxedo. We gassed up, at an exorbitant price, and
visited the souvenir shop for some postcards and other
junk. Then it was over to the cement buffalo for the
required pictures, and back on the road. Utah
beckoned. |
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Little America |
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Wind Farm near Evanston |
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Past Evanston, I-80 stretches off into the distance |
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Crossing into Utah, blue skies finally appear |
| We went through a brief shower just
as we crossed over in to Utah. Now we were crossing the
Wasatch Range, moving westward through some good sized
hills. Hal took the wheel, and I tried to get some shots
out the windshield. The first twenty or thirty miles were not much
different from Wyoming, but then we started to see more
elevation change. We seemed to be going downhill most of
the time. The road was in fine shape, nice broad
sweeping curves, and spots where you could see a small
river running along side the roadway. At Echo, we
branched off to Interstate 84 which would take us to
Ogden and the Great Salt Lake area, north of the city
proper. We'd been looking in the guide books, and
thought it might be nice to check out Antelope Island
State Park, which was right in the middle of the Great
Salt Lake. The sky was blue and clear now, perhaps
the best air we'd seen since we left New Jersey.
Even this late in June, we saw patches of snow in the
shadowed hollows of some of the peaks. The
ride down from Echo, through Weber, where we stopped at
a very nice roadside rest for a few minutes, was very
pleasant. |
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I-80
in Utah |
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I-84
splits off towards Ogden |
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The
Road, the River and the Rails |
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Rest
Area, Weber, Utah |
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We finally came down out of the mountain
after about an hour or so, and hit Interstate 15, the
main north-south roadway we'd be using for a few days.
We drove south a few miles to the town of Roy, where we
headed to the State Park entrance. By now, the sun was
blazing hot, and it was over 105 degrees, with a really
stiff wind as well. |
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Back
towards I-15 from the Park |
| Once at the park entrance though, we
found out that it's a 'primitive' park - no real
facilities. And no shade. That was the killer. I didn't
really want to spend the next five hours sitting in the
direct sun at 105', even if we DID have air
conditioning. It was just too bloody hot and windy. So
we turned around back to I-15 and went back up to Ogden,
where we found a very nice RV park with hookups,
showers, laundry, and shade trees. So we ended our
fourth day. We'd pretty much come as far west as we had
planned. We were 2287 miles from home, and
according to the GPS, we'd averaged 56 miles an hour,
not bad at all. Tomorrow, we'd go see the State Park and
Great Salt Lake. |
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End of Day 4 - 413
miles |
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Day 3 |
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Day 5 |
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