Day Fifteen -- Utah

Utah/Salt Lake City/Cedar City

I don't have much photos for this leg of the trip, simply because it was a commute from one city (Rock Springs, Wyoming) to the next (Cedar City). The 430-mile drive lasted about 10 hours, with stops including Salt Lake City at this store called Pictureline Inc. to replenish my stock of 120 millimeter film for the Holga cameras because I've used about 30 rolls of the 120 mm film that I purchased in New York. And in anticipation of really great weather and blue sky I bought five rolls of negative slide for cross-processing.

Tomorrow will be an early start to travel around Bryce Canyon, and the road winds around 230 miles. That means 230 miles of spectacular views of red rock.

Check out these photos from the National Park Service:

http://www.nps.gov/brca/photosmultimedia/photogallery%2Ehtm?eid=133109&root_aId=94#e_133109

The sunset over the mountains near Cedar City, which is about 200 miles northeast of Las Vegas, was pretty amazing. A soft orange glow and the silhouette of mountains by the Great Basin. The Rocky Mountains extends to this area, and the past two days' travel traversed the length of the range for about 1,000 miles from northern Montana/southern Alberta. I don't think I've traveled as far by car along a natural landscape such as this. Maybe on the way back east, to New York, the Appalachian Trail might be worth doing.

One of the quirks of Interstate 15 was the speed limit. Apparently the Utah Department of Transportation is experimenting with an 80 mile-per-hour maximum speed for stretches along the highway, which is the highest I've seen. I don't think a 5 mph difference is significant. There's not much difference between 75 mph and 80 mph because your vehicle's going fast, no matter what. And with few highway patrol vehicles along this road, drivers tend to go fast regardless of the limit imposed. Even in Montana, drivers will push their vehicles to 80 mph, and that seems to be an unwritten rule.

From Park City, a suburb of Salt Lake City, the temperature was 73 degrees Fahrenheit, which isn't unusual because the elevation of that place was about 6,700 feet above sea level. The drive down from the mountain was pretty amazing -- winding roads and no need to push the accelerator, just brake when needed. Reaching Salt Lake City, though, the temperature climbed to 93 degrees but with very little humidity.