Two Days And Five States Later

...and we're in Green River, Utah.

We got the rental truck expertly packed by Joe & Paul (with the generous help of Pete, Robben, and Aric) and the car loaded on the trailer by 1pm on Sunday.

By 10pm we had burned our way across Iowa and found ourselves in the glorified truckstop that is Kearney, Nebraska.

I'm convinced that Nebraska is not so much differentiated by landmarks as it is by scentmarks -- a differentiation mostly made by the specific breed of cattle they're raising on the feedlot.

My dad has virtually zero sense of smell, so I have to imagine that for him Nebraska was quite boring.

After making good time on Sunday, our goal for Monday was to conquer Colorado and her heralded 'Rockies'.

Colorado starts off deceptively flat and farm-like. For a while there I though Nebraska was just playing a joke on us. But 150 miles into it, sure enough: there's mountains.

I was worried that driving a sixteen foot rental truck and car-laden trailer would burn out our mileage, but we got across the Vail pass on one tank. (One tank = $65, mind you.)

The scenery, unlike Nebraska, is breathtaking. Joe drove (of course) and I 'navigated', by which I mean: gawked. The initial stretch feels like you're rolling through a monochrome photograph, everything in your field of view is black, white, or the pastel blue of the sky.

As you lunge through the mountain passes this palette changes color, shape, and texture: red chunks of block-like stone... undulating silty towers of eroded rock... the cool sculpted curves of a ski-hill bristling with pine.

It makes it worth endangering your life by hurtling around a canyon corner at 65 miles per hour tethered to a nine-year-old Acura that seems obstinately intent on taking the direct path to the bottom of the mountain.

Fortunately, we managed to resist the pull of gravity (mostly through the expediture of several layers of brake shoe) and landed in Grand Junction, Colorado - gateway to Utah.

We immediately crashed that gate and pressed onward, hoping to conquer Utah as well.

Our dreams of a interstate three-peat we not to be. We ran out of daylight outside of Green River, Utah, and as we coasted into town to refill the ever-ravenous gas tank we decided this was as good a place as any to break for the night.

No one really wanted to navigate more mountain passes or fend off prancing antelope in the depths of the night. Besides, we're ahead of schedule by almost one full day.

Which gives us an extra 12 hours in Vegas.

Right?

-Tom, who plans to lose the better part of his first month's rent playing baccharat.