Coast to Coast: Day 69: Three States in One Day!

We debated on whether to follow the map quest way of cutting across the plain states with all the floods and predicted storms or to head south in Nevada to Las Vegas then onto I40 all the way to NC. We opted to take our chances and cut across (the shortest route.) Leaving Nevada...

Passing through Utah...

Seeing so much of the different landscapes as we travel makes me wish I'd have paid more attention in Geology class when we studied how mountains, canyons and rivers were formed and the changes the weather and environment have on each of them.

I think my favorite landscape other than the beach, of course, has to be the Salt Flats. Well, maybe not my favorite but the one I am most curious to learn more about. It wasn't as windy through here as it was on the way out so it didn't look like snow blowing across the roads, but here is that random structure we passed. I videoed it, so I hope you will be able to see it. The music in the background is the radio (Carrie Underwood, Glenn's favorite American Idol)

We stopped at a Flying J before getting into Salt Lake City to fuel up and to rest for a while. We received two unexpected calls this afternoon. One was from my friend Gloria in Florida and the other from our friend Terry from back home.

Terry's call was especially strange because we hadn't spoken to him in a few months, since he was in Charlotte. He is a traveling nurse, which is how we met him. He was contracted at the hospital in our area and stayed right next door to us at the campground in Shallotte. Hard to believe it but he is in Rawlins, Wyoming which we plan to pass through tomorrow! So we made arrangements to stay the night there at the park where he is so we could visit a while.

As we drew near to Salt Lake, I spotted this lighthouse. Glenn said he thinks it is a smoke stack from a power plant or something, but I still maintain it is a light house.

As we entered Salt Lake City, we saw several planes flying into the airport. I thought this was a pretty neat shot with the mountains in the background.

Traffic slowed to a crawl for about 20 minutes because they had some of the lanes blocked off for road constructions right at the section where every few feet was another ramp coming into the east bound lanes.

It got really tight in a few spots and with the big rigs passing we thought a couple would clip the mirrors, but Glenn did a fabulous job of getting us out of there safe and sound. (I was holding on for dear life, so did not get many pictures of the traffic tie up!)

After we pulled out of the city the landscape changed from the flats and lakes to these rolling mountains with little neighborhoods tucked neatly in them. This is a new trek of the journey. We went down to Colorado on the way out west.