Driving in the southwest

We took a left turn in Albuquerque and headed North to Salt Lake.
I usually don’t post an update about the drive, but this is a special place. I’m not sure the pictures will even do it justice. I really should have gotten out the good camera for some of these.

Most of west Texas is very dull and boring, and it takes about 5 hours to drive through. There’s only so many windmills, oil pumps, and scrub brish you can look at before you go crazy. But then the landscape slowly starts to change and little by little you get some geographic variations. We spent the night in Albequerque, but didn’t have the energy to get out and see the city. So that will still be on our list for next time.

The drive from Albequerque to SLC is really the gem here. At first there’s nothing but flat desert and then all of the sudden there will be a 100 foot rock formation jutting out towards the sky. You get all excited like you’re seeing the last living dinosaur or something. Then there’s another, and another, until you’re suddenly surrounded by large red rock walls. Then they dissappear for a while. But they would be back.

Laurel wanted to see the cliff dwellings in Colorado, so we made a short detour to the National Park. But since we were on a tight schedule we only had under an hour to see it. But it turns out that from the entrance to the park it’s a 45 minutes drive to the actual cliffs. So the gift shop and small museum would have to do.

The drive kept getting better after that, we pushed forward to Utah and were rewarded with more great scenery. There’s something just so foreign about treeless rock formations that excites me. We got really used to slowing down to 35mph on the way up these long rolling hills and then letting it run free down the backside to the next one. We’ve really come a long way since the white knuckles we had coming up the mountains in Tennessee.

We eventually passed through enough farmland to make it to Moab Utah, we didn’t have time to stop since we were still a couple hours from Salt Lake. We passed by the Moab Brewing Company, I shed a tear. This looks like an outdoor oasis, everyone is hiking, atv, biking everywhere.

We didn’t get to go to Arches National Park because we were hauling ass through this Canyon on to get to SLC by a reasonable hour. But we did stop and see Wilson’s Arch. It was impressive.

laurel drove the last, and most difficult hour. Where we discovered that sometimes lanes just end and are filled with cones forcing you to thread the needle between oncoming traffic and a foot dropoff on the side. SHE’S A PRO.

After starting the day in Albuquerque sometime in the morning, We got into SLC at 11:45 PM. Another successful leg of our journey, complete.

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