Sunday Sunday Sunday

Woke up after a much needed nine hours sleep in Ontario, Oregon and hit the road. Idaho was pretty; we stopped in Twin Falls for lunch at the adorable Depot Diner, and then went by the Hispanic Heritage Festival (!!!) downtown -- which was stunning custom low-rider cars. Plus low rider bicycles, which was a new one for me. Stopped by Crystal Hot Springs for a swim in their olympic size 94F pool --- wasn't in our "Hot Springs & Hot Pools of the Northwest" (is that because Utah is no longer northwest?) -- but such an excellent surprise. Stunning views.

Then on down to Salt Lake City, via a brief detour when we came off one city too early, and were surprised at how rinky dink SLC seemed to be. Then we figured out our mistake, and found the real thing, and were surprised at how rinky dink it was trying very hard *not* to be. Huge streets, massive blocks. Every street is 6 lanes wide. Big imposing buildings. The temple itself is awesome: totally fairy tale. And if you haven't, go and read the Mormon's founding story, with the angel Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith in upstate New York three times over the course of a night, each time repeating what he said before plus a little bit more, and eventually guiding him to a cave with scriptures written on gold plates...

We tried to go out to a gay bar that was listed in our guidebook, but it was closed, and we ended up at a nice cafe/bar/eatery place that was amazingly still serving at 10pm on a Sunday night. It turned out to be new-comics night, which was horrible. ("So my family's Persian, and you know what Persian weddings are like." Uh... probably not.) One guy, Sahdiki, was awesome, tho, and is apparently on tour. Then back to the hotel for an early night.

Utah Saints. Wyoming Sux. Colorado Beemer.

Woke bright and early in SLC and hit the road by 8:45. Utah is just beautiful, stunning scenery. And such nice people. I realized we were on I-80, and so had to play the really excellent "Highway Eighty (She's A Might Fine Road) by Dave Carter & Tracy Chapman (I missed you, aneequs, and also leighjen) and then I remembered we were in Utah so I forced Janet to dig up my old techno by the Utah Saints (do you remember them? UTAH SAINTS! UTAH SAINTS! UTAH SAINTS U-U-U-UTAH SAINTS! blah blah What can you do for me? blah blah Through the lightning etc.) and then we hit the techno until we could count to four no longer.

And then into Wyoming.

Apologies to anyone from Wyoming.

But my god. We do not like Wyoming. We were singing a variety of variations on "Why, Why, Wyoming?". The landscape just isn't a patch on Utah or Idaho or even Oregon. And we had lunch in Rawlins, which was the biggest town for a ways, and it was just totally mediocre. Not that the people are nasty or rude or anything, it was just boring as hell to drive through. So whine whine whine, my... Chrysler hurts.

To Wyoming's credit, there's an excellent hot spring in a town called Saratoga WY. The town has built a nice concrete enclosure, and the pool is HOT, over 120F is my bet. And it's free. And then after that, you go sit in the creek which has the offflow from the pool so you can mix the appropriate level of heating & cooling you're looking for.

And now we're on our way to see dr_tectonic and the boys! So much fun. Good dinner. Then we decided to head and get on the other side of Denver rather than trying to do it in the middle of rush hour in the morning, or waiting for rush hour to be done.

I'm in the process of uploading the last three days of photos. Sorry, haven't done a very good job of integrating them. (Or is it that LiveJournal doesn't do a very good job of integrating them.... Anyway) Have a look at http://jofish.com/galleries/2005/ for much photodocumentation.

Btw, usual apologies if I haven't been replying to email or making the phone calls I should. It's not because I don't love you, I promise.

Finally! Photos: http://www.jofish.com/galleries/2005/roadtrip/day3-utah-wyoming-colorado/day3-utah-wyoming-colorado.htm

Where are you Don Norman when I need you?

The world's worst roadsign. Click for bigger image.

Notice the fact that most of the writing is too small to read -- and there's too much of it -- particularly when you realize that htis roadsign is on a road with a 75mph speed limit. Notice that it's oriented with up being East -- ok, perhaps reasonable in the circumstances. But really.