As I enter the freeway I noticed it is damp on the edges. Apparently a rain shower has moved through. The weather forecast for the next few days isn’t great. Whether I head northeast to Yellowstone and Grand Teton or southeast towards Colorado, the next few days may include rain and snow showers, and nighttime temperatures as low as the low 20s. I’m surprised to see as I climb the western slope of the Sierras that there are patches of snow as low as 4000 feet. As I continue the snow blankets the ground, then gets deeper, then it starts to snow. Soon I’m driving through a blizzard with 4-5 inches of snow on the sides of the road! By Donner Summit it’s dark and traffic has slowed to a crawl due to black ice on the road, and everyone’s going slow down the steep descent towards the Tahoe Basin. On the other side of the freeway a tow truck has about 75 feet of cable out and is hauling an SUV out of the snowy thirty foot deep trench between the eastbound and westbound lanes.
I decided that I’d better stop a few miles ahead in Truckee and rethink my plans. My mother is off traveling, but I stop by her place to pick up my snow chains and a couple of logs. It has stopped snowing, and some stars a visible above. I decide that the storm is local and that I want to get on the road so I can get somewhere by the following night.
I drive as far as I can into Nevada before I get tired. The sate seems endless. Some of the hills alongside the road have dusting of snow on them, but the road is clear so I make decent progress. When even the quirky radio stations can’t hold my interest any more, I pull over at a rest stop and stretch out in my down sleeping bag in the back. I’m about halfway across Nevada. Depending upon whether I turn north or south at Salt lake City, I should be able to make it To Wyoming or Southern Utah by the following night.
By the time I reach the Utah border there are more cars on the road, and the Bonneville Salt Flats are on the other side of the westbound lanes of the freeway, so I pass through without a shot. Someone has some trucks and trailers out on the salt flats, and they have marked a straight track across the flat surface. Perhaps they’re in pursuit of a speed record? At Salt Lake I decide that Colorado is a safer destination, since there are warmer, lower elevations nearby in New Mexico and Arizona if the cold and snow is too intense. If the storms have knocked the colorful leaves off the aspen in Colorado, I can explore slot canyons in Southern Utah instead.
I stop a short distance south of Salt Lake City in the town of Provo for supplies, and I notice that people are traveling in packs… 4… 5… 6… and it’s mostly housewives with their children. Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!
Checking the map, Arches National Park in Moab, Utah not far from the Colorado border, seems like a good target for sunset. It looks like I can arrive about an hour before sunset, which will give me time to get into the park and get set up somewhere.
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