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Published: June 26th 2007
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Lindsey and I headed out of the little town of
Moab after spending some time in the sun next to the pool. We haven't really spent much time relaxing like that so we figured that we'd take the opportunity. We didn't really have a destination in mind, only that we were going to her cousin's house 14 hours away. We got into the car and headed west. The drive was pretty much uneventful until we reached
Salt Lake City. We got to see the
Great Salt Lake, which was beautiful. We got out at a rest stop along the highway and checked it out. We had actually taken a wrong turn and ended up on a different highway, which eventually lead to the one that we were looking for, but we were glad that we did. I'm sure that we wouldn't have had the view of the lake had we been on the original planned route. The GPS stopped working at the right moment for us. There are mountains surrounding it, definitely nothing that I had pictured in my mind. Back on the road we drove past a few forest fires, literally right next to us. In total they had
burned over 1,600 acres of trees. It wasn't until a bit later that we heard about the
Lake Tahoe fires, right where we were headed. We drove more through the state and happened upon the
Bonneville Salt Flats where the fastest land speed was recorded. The flats were awesome. They were pure white salt, which actually looked like a frozen over lake that stretched to the base of the mountains. There was another rest stop that we pulled off at to check this out. I had quite the funny encounter while we were here. Lindsey was off walking around talking to her cousins on the phone and I was out on the salt taking pictures and playing around. While I was down there a car sped into the parking lot, parked, a man jumped out and RACED down to the flats. I stopped everything I was doing and just stared at him. He had scooped up a handful of the salt and was inspecting it, smelling it, and I really thought that he was going to put a bunch of it in his mouth when he realized that he was being watched. Picture a man that looked like Borat with
a French Canadian accent. He said Hi there, how are you doing? I answered that I was fine and asked how he was. He proceeded to tell me that he did not speak English very well and that he was from Montreal Canada and that I think this is snow. It took me a few to realize that he meant that he had been confused about what he was seeing while he was driving (because remember that it was 103 degrees for the past two days) and that it couldn’t possibly be some weird kind of snow that was able to stay on the ground in that kind of weather. It was really funny. Next time you see me, I’ll do the impression, it’s a lot better hearing it than reading it I’m sure . We got back in the car and headed to get some food. We got off on the last exit in
Utah in a little town called
West Wendover which was partly in
Utah and partly in
Nevada. We ended up finding this casino called
Montego Bay where we had all you can eat prime rib for $17. The day just got a bit better. During
dinner we decided that we would find out how much it cost to stay there… there were more people in the casino than we had seen for about 36 hours and we were craving a little socializing. We found out that the hotel at the casino was $65 for the night. Sold! We went out to the car and grabbed our stuff and brought it up to our REALLY nice room. We couldn’t believe that this place was so much cheaper than anything that we had seen thus far on our trip. We spent the evening on the penny slots, both coming up short in the end, but both hitting big at some point in the night. My favorite was Lindsey hitting $32 on a 50 cent bet. We got up in the morning and once again relaxed by the pool. We’re definitely living the life out here on our trip! At about 11:30 we hit the road again, this time heading for the West Coast! We crossed the border into California at about 5:30pm. We were in Northern California about 40 miles north of Tahoe and could definitely see the smoke. The visibility was awful. We’re planning on heading
down there tomorrow, it will definitely be a sad sight to see. As of this blog, over 200 homes and buildings have been destroyed by the fires and from what we hear, they’re still going strong. We arrived at Lindsey’s cousin’s house in
Graeagle and then went out to eat at a little place called
The Coyote. Luckily for them, the food was awesome, because the service was terrible. In the morning we got up and went to the
Lakes Basin Recreation Area and did a little hiking with her cousins and their kids. One of the boys
Aiden had a stick that he really wanted to take on his hike so we did that for a while. After that we went to a little park in
Portola and played on the jungle gym. The weather was perfect! We were finally out of the heat wave and could enjoy ourselves outside. Because we had talked up the food from the night before so much, we all went together for lunch. Again it was amazing. We went back to the house and had a really relaxing afternoon. I took a really long nap and Lindsey played with the kids. At about 4 we went over to her aunt
Susan’s house where we made and ate dinner. So far our trip to
California has been really relaxing, which we have definitely needed!
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Favorite Uncle Charlie
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Keep Writing!
Hi Heather (and Lindsey too!) I have enjoyed reading your blogs. Keep them up. It sounds like you two are having an awesome trip. Wish I was there...I could do one of those races in under 36 (days that is) easily.