Better late than never!

I know, I know, it’s been several weeks (at this time last year, I was finishing up my trip.) I’ve…well, been a slacker (long story.) So here is a bit more on last years journey. I promise, I will eventually finish writing it all up.

Day 6-7 Moab to Layton, UT to La Grande, OR

I end up in a very northern suburb of Salt Lake City, as I kept on procrastinating on where to get off of the interstate at. I finally found an exit, that a) didn’t look dodgy, b) looked like a car place may be near and c) intersection didn’t look confusing. I rented a hotel room, the first one ever. It was really exciting. I made use of everything I could—Ice, the shower, swimming, breakfast, the tv. I wanted to get my monies worth. And I did. It wasn't too expensive at all. Points for random suburb hotel. AND! There was an oil place nearby. They just ended up giving me an oil change. This seemed to fix everything.

So I set on the road again, going northwest to Oregon. And I passed through southern Idaho, which was unbelievably disappointing (Idaho also produces an amazingly deceptive state map--Warning: the bottom is much wider than the map is telling you, and the top is much narrower than that map is telling you, really.) It really made me think about my own home, where every few miles there is an exit, which some sort of town within a manageable distance. In northern Utah/Southern Idaho, it was all “ranch exits,” 50 miles apart from each other. Very different.

Eventually the land got less dry mountain like when I crossed into Oregon (I had to stop at the first exit, and saw the first of many Oregon trail related things. This was very exciting to me. Pioneers!) The night before I marked out several state parks I could stop at along the way, but zoomed past several of them before stopping at what was one of my favorite stops the whole trip (which I will go into detail in my next post): the Blue Mountains!