The Post In Which I Finish Regaling You All About My Road Trip That Concluded Over Two Months Ago

Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, eh?

My God. I'm determined to finish blogging about my road trip even though it was over 2 months ago. Call it the OCD in me. I am finishing it tonight, then an incredible burden will be lifted from my shoulders. That's the hope, anyway. You guys are probably bored about all this and want me to end it anyway. But it's not as if I'm posting any other exciting news, so it's this or nothing, for now!

Where was I? Oh yeah...

Day 8
We left my grandma's and headed north towards Utah. We went through Navajo Territory (it sounds like we're riding horses with Billy the Kid, or something) and it was pretty depressing. See picture. Everything was so dilapidated and barren. Man, we totally screwed over the Native Americans. I still feel bad about it even though, obviously, I personally had nothing to do with it.


Yeah. So then the weather turned uber crappy and began to downpour. And continued to do so. We were heading to Monument Valley with a final destination of Arches National Park where we were planning on camping. So, understandably, we were pissed at Mother Nature. I mean, come on. We're in AZ. It's not even October yet. Why is it pouring rain the one day we were planning on actually camping outside? In a tent? So, for quite a while, this was our view out of the car window:


Roads in the SW are HORRIBLE when it rains. I don't know if they build them differently than in the midwest, but the rain just puddles up on the roadway like there's no drainage system at all. It's kind of scary, as you feel like you're going to start hydroplaning at any time. Not a fan.

As we reached Monument Valley the weather cleared up slightly, so at least it wasn't raining for the most part. Although it was still dreary looking. We hit the AZ/Utah border in Monument Valley. Here's the sign, with probably the best scenic background yet. Ok, so it's technically the San Juan County sign, but the Utah sign was right next to it. But you've already seen that one the first time we entered Utah (it features a skier).


There is absolutely nothing for quite a while after Monument Valley. We wanted to stop and eat lunch and pee, but there was nothing to be seen. We finally stopped at a gas station and I got a Lunchables, bringing me back to my elementary school days.

There was this cheesy tourist spot on the way. It was called Hole N" the Rock. From what I could gather, it's a cave. That sells trinkets. And I couldn't get over how they had painted that giant name on the rock face, complete with weird grammar. First of all, why did they use a quotation mark? It should be an apostrophe. Second, it's on the wrong side of the N. Third, it's giant and ugly. It was also written in even more giant letters on the other side of the rock wall.


Because of the rain we also made bad time, which sucked because this was the only day we were going to be able to see Arches (we were planning on leaving early in the morning). But we made it with a couple of hours of daylight left and ended up making a quick round in the car of Arches. The rain had stopped by now, thankfully (although we still ended up staying in a hotel instead of camping, due to a multitude of reasons). I thought it was beautiful. It was actually a very pretty time of the day that we were there. The sky was pretty. Helped, in part, by the earlier bad weather. The rain made the rocks extra red and the clouds made the sky very pretty. I'd love to go there again and be able to spend more time there.


Day 9
We left Utah and headed for Colorado. Our ending destination being Denver. Joleen and Sunny are thinking about possibly living in Denver (it has some decent restaurants, I guess) after Australia and possibly the Caribbean, so they wanted to check it out. Look, God really does love Utahians/Utahnites/the People of Utah:

Welcome to Colorado! It's colorful! And it actually was. Good time of the year. The pretty fall colors picture is from somewhere in the Vale area. Then we've got the picture of the capitol building in Denver. Oh no! A ghostly terrorist is driving his ghost car into the capitol dome!!! Good thing the car is incorporeal! They didn't think that one through enough, silly ghost terrorists.

What did we do in Denver? Not much. We went to Boulder where we ate dinner. It reminded me a lot of Madison. Same atmosphere--college town, liberal, there was even a street very reminiscent of State Street. Anyway, it was fairly uneventful.

Day 10 - THE LAST DAY!!!!
We left Denver. We ate lunch at the grossest fast food restaurant EVER. Not exaggerating. It was an A&W connected to a gas station in the middle of nowhere. It smelled very strongly of cow manure. The air was thick with flies. We left our car windows cracked open when we went inside because Wicket was in the car. Afer finally getting our orders, we sat down to eat. The burgers were literally dripping with grease. I unwrapped my burger, picked it up, and a stream of grease oozed out of the burger and joined the pool of grease already on the wrapper. The bottom bun was completely saturated. Let's just say I couldn't eat it all and felt like vomiting. The restaurant also smelled like manure and was invaded by flies. I kid you not, there was one of those sticky tape fly-catchers hanging above one of the tables. EEEEWWWWW. I'd hate to sit at that table. And yes, there were dead flies stuck to it. Liz, it was your nightmare restaurant. After we got back to the car we discovered that flies had invaded the car. There had to be at least 30 of them in there. We tried to get as many of them out as we could, but all the way to Minnesota we were still finding them. It's always fun to open a window on the interstate and attempt to shoo a fly out of it. Here's a picture of Sunny and Wicket playing Mr. Miyagi, trying to catch a fly:


We then entered Nebraska. Apparently, Nebraska is the 'home' of Arbor Day. It's also "...the good life" for those who can't get enough of cornfields.


Here is a video. It's 30 seconds long. Watch this video and multiply by...a lot...and you'll experience what we experienced driving through Nebraska. Hoot and a holler, eh?



Sunny also became obsessed with getting an oil change. Which wasn't the easiest thing on a Sunday in Nebraska. We ended up stopping at a WalMart to get it done. Here's Joleen and Wicket hanging out in the WalMart parking lot. And here's a few more pictures of Wicket, just because she's the cutest thing EVER.




Then we entered Iowa. Yee-haw. Iowa...Fields of Opportunities. Sure. It quickly became dark. Not that Iowa has any scenery anyway. Here's our car dash. Quick! Out of Iowa!!!



And we finally made it to Minnesota in the wee hours of the morning. I think we arrived home at 2-3am or so. I did manage to get this AWESOME shot of the Minnesota welcome sign. Enjoy:


And that's all she wrote. 'She' being me. Fin.