Wednesday, April 21, 2010
It finally caught us... Rain! We were about 45 mins into the drive, and it didn't let up until about 30 mins to our destination, which we cut short because we were just done. When it drizzles, I kinda jump & blink because I'm expecting the drops to hit my face, but of course, they just hit the faceshield. When it's pouring, you just kinda get used to the cold and not being able to see all that great, luckily we were in a mostly very flat, straight portion of the country today. Combine that with the wind, and you hold on tight, try to stay in the lane, and pass trucks as quickly as possible. At one point, it was raining ridiculously hard, and I went through a groove of water, which felt like a hydro-plane, I was fine, but soaked Kevin who was behind me! After a bit of hail, we went to a restaurant pit stop to get some refuge, and were welcomed to a printed sign on the door reading 'High winds I-80 West Bound', which is where we just came from! While ordering, we pre-apologized to the waitress, because we left *huge* puddles on the floor. Kevin had to buy new socks, because his boots let a little water in, and his feet were wet. After drinking hot cocoa and eating a warm meal, we piled our damp stuff back on, went about 30 more miles, and called it a day.
Aside from the rain, there was some cool scenery (from what we could see of it)... There are salt flats around Salt Lake City, normally I guess it can create mirages because it's just huge expanses of gleaming white salty land, but today they were filled with water. The road was just this little stretch of land, floating in a sea all around. There were some small-ish mountains in the distance, which looked like islands, because there was literally water as far as you could see. The mountains even reflected themselves in the water, so I just turned up my heated gear and pretended I was in the tropics. Then when we got to Salt Lake City and Park City (where we're staying tonight), it got really beautiful, green mountains, snow caped peaks, and such cute ski resort towns. I knew absolutely nothing about Salt Lake, so that was a pleasant surprise, I'm sure it would be even nicer not covered over in gusty clouds of gray. We've been checking the weather over the next two days, and it looks even more miserable...Rain and snow in WY. So so so glad that the days before this were so wonderful, kinda hard to complain at this point, or at least I keep telling myself that.