7-5-2007
Departure time: 8:30am MST
Arrival time: 9:30pm MST
Dead deer: 2-3
Penske Trucks: 6
Number of black people spotted between Portland and Denver: 2
Wish I had brought: No Doze
Pictures
For those of you with short attention spans or busy schedules, you can cut to the chase:
Movie disclaimer: This represents about 5 hours of self-taught Imovie skills, so expect weird transitions, bumpy camera work and uneven audio. Basically, you'll feel like you were there!
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The deer count is in question because I saw what may have been two halves of one deer about a quarter mile apart. These are the few times when I'm glad I'm not on a bike...
Everyone was a tad bit crankier this morning as we got started, but thankfully, nothing came to fisticuffs. Traci mentioned going to Antelope Island in the morning, but then I thought she said it was too far out of the way. So when she asked me if I still wanted to go, I was confused. "It's not too far, it's just 10 miles," she said. "Do you want to go?"
"I'm ambivalent," I said. Wrong answer. She had a little tantrum about decision making. Turned out she was ambivalent as well and hoping I'd make up her mind for her. "Fine, let's go then!" So we went.
Just outside Ogden, we took the exit and went down a street until it ended and turned into a long causeway leading to the island. I found it a little creepy, the way the road stretched out so deserted over the water. The smell of sulfur hit us so hard, my best mouth breathing couldn't conquer it. There were about a million little gray and white birds off to one shore, no doubt feasting on brine shrimp, one of the many delicacies the island offered to it's huge bird population.
We were the only car on the road. As was my habit, I was checking the shoulder of the road for bikability. I checked my odometer so I could figure out how long the ride from the mainland to the island would be. When I looked up again, I saw a speck of red in the distance, not big enough to be another car. Holy crap, could it be...?
"Traci, get the camera, there's a biker up there!" She obliged. Somehow I always feel better when I see bikers in the towns we stop in. The fact that he was acting out my exact current fantasy (minus the sulfur smell and the 90 degree heat at nine in the morning), put me in a good mood.
We did a quick tour of the visitors center, skimming plaques with information about birds, bison and antelope they had to be reintroduced into the island. The island is huge and there's a ranch at the far end. I would've loved to go rent some horses and go out in search of seeing some bison up close if we'd had the time. I wondered if the biker would see any.
It was 10:00am when we got back on the road. In my zeal to figure out my new video capabilities for blogging, I had stayed up pretty late the night before and forgotten that we'd crossed a time zone during the day. My computer clock said 1:00am when I finally shut it off, which I realized belatedly meant 2:00am local time. As a result, I didn't last long behind the wheel. By noon my eyes were droopy and I yielded the cockpit to Traci. I spent most of my non-driving time sleeping throughout the day and the rest of it reading the entire manual for my new camera so I could learn about cool features like color filters:
I was very glad that the next day would be a 'rest' (i.e. non-driving) day.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
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