The Oregon Trail, Day 5: Crossing the Rockies
Long day today-- 767 miles or thereabouts, from Cheyenne, WY, to Caldwell, ID (30 miles beyond Boise.) Good news is that this was the longest leg of the trip, and we're only 30 miles from the Oregon border. Bad news is that we've got about 9 hours of driving tomorrow; either we take the interstate up north, west along the Washington border to Portland, and then two hours south, or we take a more direct route that's 100 miles shorter on a smaller highway that will take the same amount of time. I can't decide which I prefer.
I did the early part of the driving today, through the mountainy bits of Wyoming. For the most part we had sunny weather and clear roads, though it was a bit touchy going through the high mountain pass in Medicine Bow National Forest just before Laramie-- it was snowing hard, and the wind was blowing the snow across the road so hard that I couldn't always see the asphalt, which made me a bit nervous, so that was slower going. Dad and I switched after lunch, and he drove the rest of the way. I was glad to have a chance to enjoy the scenery, but he nearly gave me a heart attack with how fast he drove through and down from the mountains near Salt Lake City; those were by far the most dramatic mountains, and the steepest, most winding descents, and it was compounded by strong winds and lots of trucks... I was white-knuckled on the door handle, and was sure that he was going to roll us over at some point.
I did take some photos of pretty rock formations from the moving car with my cell phone, and they mostly came out okay, though not nearly as impressive as they looked in real life. I did like how these two came out, of funky rock formations in Wyoming:
I did the early part of the driving today, through the mountainy bits of Wyoming. For the most part we had sunny weather and clear roads, though it was a bit touchy going through the high mountain pass in Medicine Bow National Forest just before Laramie-- it was snowing hard, and the wind was blowing the snow across the road so hard that I couldn't always see the asphalt, which made me a bit nervous, so that was slower going. Dad and I switched after lunch, and he drove the rest of the way. I was glad to have a chance to enjoy the scenery, but he nearly gave me a heart attack with how fast he drove through and down from the mountains near Salt Lake City; those were by far the most dramatic mountains, and the steepest, most winding descents, and it was compounded by strong winds and lots of trucks... I was white-knuckled on the door handle, and was sure that he was going to roll us over at some point.
I did take some photos of pretty rock formations from the moving car with my cell phone, and they mostly came out okay, though not nearly as impressive as they looked in real life. I did like how these two came out, of funky rock formations in Wyoming: