Last week I helped Gregg move back from Washington. He finally threw in the towel with the idiot up there who was trying to swindle somebody into buying his junk yard "ethanol plant". I use the words ethanol plant very loosely. So I flew up on Friday and we packed everything in the Uhaul and had his apartment cleaned out in about 2 hours. Gregg said goodbye to the stray cats he had been taking care of and got his deposit back.
We headed off to Bob's resturaunt 
to say goodbye to Gregg's friend Lloyd.
Our plan was to head south to Oregon, then clip the corner of Idaho, fall through Salt Lake City and then across Colorado via Grand Junction to Denver. From there it's a straight shot into Missouri via dreaded Kansas.
Day one was uneventful, Gregg was a little sad about leaving his home for 9 months. Kind of bummed that he ended up not building a plant. Although he did learn a lot about ethanol production and probably most important he met a couple of good friends who help set him straight in life. In fact it's how he came up with the next chapter in his life, teaching college. Oregon is a mess of a state. They still have an outdated law that requires a service station attendant to fill your gas for you. That's right, it's against the law to do it yourself. Gregg hooked up his Garmin C330 GPS unit which kept us on the road and let us know of upcoming gas stations, food, tourist sites, etc. Nice unit for under $300. We used the GPS to tell us where a Motel 6 was in Boise and got us there perfectly.
We drove out Boise the next day into Twin Falls. Really neat town, about 100 miles from Boise. It's right along the Snake river canyon and was established as the first food processing town in Idaho. So it was like a center for all of the produce in the surrounding farmland. Coming into town we crossed a bridge over the Snake river canyon. Way below you see golf course at the bottom. Using my new smartphone I found out there were some large waterfalls, called the Shoshone Falls just outside of Twin Falls. Of course we hauled the Uhaul down the canyon to check it out.
It's supposed to be taller than Niagra Falls. Idaho reminded me a lot of old tv westerns. I kept waiting for Roy Rogers to start singing. So we drove on, we took turns driving the beast. We crossed our fingers that we wouldn't run into bad weather along the way. We drove through Salt Lake City and decided to risk it and get off the interstate and take a shortcut to I-70. We kind of took a wrong turn (outguessing the GPS unit I guess is a male attribute) and ended up in the mud. We decided to take a pee break and then Gregg turned that into a smoking break. I asked him why he just doesn't get a nicotine patch instead of wasting so much time with lighting up and smoking through a whole cigarette. He said nah, those don't stay lit, I already tried that. We survived the mountain pass shortcut and pulled into Grand Junction Colorado and let the GPS unit guide us into our next Motel 6. Long day of driving. Interesting, we have yet to even turn the radio on. We mostly talked the whole time or one of us took a nap.
We got up early and headed out to cross Colorado. Kind of the high point as far as scenery is concerned. We stopped off at a rest stop in a canyon. This rest stop was beautiful. It rivaled many campgrounds in terms of natural beauty. We sort of hung out there for awhle and walked along the river and walking paths. I had read that when they built the interstate the designers were impelled by the environmental groups to leave the canyons untouched. So they elevated much of the highway so as not to disturb the natural elements. I have to say they did a really good job.
You could hardly notice the highway in all of this beauty. We came through Vail pass at 12,000 feet. Neat to see so much snow. Luckily the sun was out and no threat of precip. Gregg lived in Colorado before and was taken back by all the growth along I-70. He had a lot of stories of driving around those parts 15 years ago. Of course the closer we got to Denver the more we tried to take in the mountains. At one point the moon was coming up over a mountain and we remarked that tommorow it the moon will be sitting over a field of wheat. We gps'd into our last Motel 6 in Hays, Kansas. Gregg got some Captain Morgans and I bought some hamburgers and we sat in his room and watched Star Trek. We talked about how life takes us all kinds of places and yet we end up in Hays Kansas in our 40s, still watching Star Trek.
The next day it was pedal to the metal as we plowed through the wheat fields of Kansas and blew through Kansas City. What a confusing route they ran the interstate through that flyover town. I'll never complain again about how twisted I-71 wraps through downtown Cincinnati. KC you take the cake. We arrived in St. Louis after 3 days of travel. Nice to get home and eat some real non-fast food and sleep in my own bed. Home sweet home.
More pictures of the trip are on my google images page.