Pictures: Mormon Temple | Desert Mountain | Desert Highway | Mountains | Salt Lake City
"I had the most incredible time!!!"
-- EddieWe DID the roadtrip of the year!
... I drove 5 hours til 9:00pm, by then we were somewhere in Oregon. The view along this way was sooooo amazing...so many rolling hills and gorgeous landscapes. Then Karim drove for the next little while. We got to Idaho somewhere, and then Jens took over. At this time, I was dead asleep in the back of Karim's little Golf. They woke me up to finish the driving, in any case, we reached Salt Lake City, Utah, the city of the Mormons... that was really bizarre! We went to the main temple, and there were all these white people, kids adults gardening around the temple.. kind of like a cult, sooooo weird! No other non-white people were present... I felt very uncomfortable. Anyways, Jens wanted to go in the temple.. so we wandered in.. Apparently, a big part of the Mormon belief is in recruiting people.. soon, these two girls came to talk to Karim. In any case, once I came out, they sent one of their Japanese recruiters to track me down.. it was soo weird.. Karim noticed that she saw me and her eyes lit up.. so we were trying to leave, but she came after me, asking if I was Japanese, etc.. I said no, and we managed to leave without being harassed again.. weird stuff.
Anyways, we left to find our camp ground. We eventually came to this place called Zion National Park. It was sooo amazing! We decided to climb this massive hill, where there's this ridge that one can fall off on either side. There's this big warning sign.. "severe climb, not suitable for people with fear of heights, etc!" In any case, by the time I reached the second plateau, my back had totally given out. It was a 1800 feet climb that we just ran up..Karim and Jens continued to the very top. I have tons of pictures.. so many panoramic shots to develop.
Then we went back to the car and drove to our camp site. We didn't really have a camp site, we were supposed to follow this trail and find a spot to camp. Of course, this was already dark, and we had to set up in the dark with a lantern and flashlight.
Woke up due to the heat from the desert.. looked outside.. incredible, we picked a winner. Surrounded by sand stone hills, it was incredible. I decided to take my shirt off, and became buffet a la Eddie for the gazillions of bugs there..
We then drove to Las Vegas enroute to California to drive up the coastline. Las Vegas was very weird.. definitely like the movies.. very trashy and stuff. The drive to California was just as amazing as the drive going to the Zion park. We saw this hill with all these windmills! So cool! Anyways, lots of pictures to see later.
The drive back was not as spectacular as we hoped.. a bit of rain. We drove through San Francisco around 12:00 midnight though..I woke up and we were already in Oregon somewhere going to a seedy diner for breakfast.
Eddie