I realized that I said I was going to blog about my road trip to Wyoming but never got around to it. In the post-holiday boredom I thought it was a good time to catch up…. actually I am just avoiding doing dishes.
I got up early and drove north of the 15 for a long long long time. That part of the trip was both uneventful and somewhat boring. Don’t get me wrong-I love to drive. I mean I really love to drive, however sometimes it gets quite lonely. Nevertheless I had my podcasts and overactive imagination to keep me company.
South of Salt Lake the rain started and was very heavy. Not a big deal as I am a capable of driving a Saturn through wind, sleet, rain, and snow (much like the postal service). Once I turned east on the 80 things got a little more treacherous. As I climbed in elevation towards Parley’s summit the torrential rain turned into a blizzard of epic proportions. Not far out of Salt Lake I saw a sign that said, “Chains Required”. Now, most of you may know that when there is a sign requiring chains you do one of two things; either pull over and put on your chains or turn around. I chose option three: keep driving like I hadn’t seen the signs. After all the sign was not very specific…it didn’t say, “Hey, any cars that are very light and are built out of plastic parts like Legos this sign also applies to you”. At the very least I thought that if chains were really required then there would be someone checking to make sure stupid people followed the rules. Needless to say, no one stopped me.
I kept driving in the left lane following the row of cars up the summit towards the Wyoming border. As I was driving the snow was incredible, if you’ve never driven in a snowstorm then this is impossible to describe because the sense of isolation is tremendous. The snow is mesmerizing as it comes right at the car and then swoops around the windshield at the last second. It looks a lot like “Warp Speed Chewy” mode from the original Star Wars. Added to the hypnotic flakes is the absolute darkness of the world around, as the snow blankets the sky and ground the only illumination comes from the headlights that light up the flakes like a wall about 5 feet in front of the vehicle and occasionally there is a street light that makes a cone of white blizzard that reminds me of a glitter lava lamp.
After what seemed like a lifetime, I started to notice a few things, the roads were getting more slippery, the snow was getting thicker, the trucks had all pulled to the side of the road, there were not lights on the west bound side of the road, and all of the cars that were the same size as mine were stuck at varying degrees of haphazardness in the right lanes of the interstate. I knew that as long as I kept driving then I wouldn’t get stuck and wouldn’t have to explain to some patronizing and overly concerned good ol’ boy that I ignored the chains warning. So I stayed behind the SUV I had been following and just kept creeping along. The long line of cars was going approximately 5 miles an hour... sometimes hitting top speeds of 7 mph. As the line got closer to the summit it thinned out and the cars that had 4 wheel drive speed off to Evanston and I was left with the handful of semi trucks that were still creeping along and a whole lot of nothing.
This is when the crazy set in. I was terrified that I would get stuck and not be able to get unstuck before someone rammed into my car. I just kept thinking about possible heroic deeds that I would have to perform to get out of these horrible death inducing scenarios. I settled that if I got stuck I would use the car mats as traction and just leave them on the road somewhere in east Utah. All I could focus on was; keep driving, keep driving, keep driving, keep driving. If there had been a snapshot of that moment I would be headed toward bedlam for sure; wearing my traveling clothes (flip-flops, pajama pants, old t-shirt, ugly brown sweater), a death grip on the steering wheel, no sound, no distractions, rocking back and forth, muttering to myself and paranoid searching for cars that would probably kill me if for some reason I got stuck.
Fast-forward about 3 hours of this rocking and muttering and I realized that I had another crisis; I had drunk a very large Diet Coke about 5 hours before and now bladder capacity was reaching threat level midnight. Again, so many scenarios flew through my mind most of them ending in death by freezing, being hit by a semi, or dying of carbon monoxide inhalation from being trapped a snow bank and running my engine (curse you Hunter’s Safety classes in middle school!). I had come to two options; the first (which was becoming more and more of a possibility) was just peeing and then cleaning it up later when I was not in a death or death situation, the second was to pull of the road and hope that I wouldn’t get stuck. After about an hour of deliberation (and 20 miles or so of road) I couldn’t hold it anymore. By this time there was no one around. No semis, no d-bags in giant pick-ups, no one! Pulling over was dangerous because I was worried that I wouldn’t get going again and would have to employ the car mat crisis procedure. I saw a bridge up ahead and realized this may be my only chance at relief. I pulled into the right lane and stopped. Not on the shoulder, not in the barrow pit, IN THE RIGHT LANE. I opened my door put one foot out and took care of business quickly. Needless to say it’s not every day my bare behind is in a blizzard. Luckily, I had stopped under the bridge so it didn’t take much to get going again and I just kept driving.
I finally had driven the 120 miles or so to Evanston and pulled over there after calling WyoRoads to find out that 80 was closed for the next 100 miles or so. I got a motel room and settled in for the night. The next morning, I got up at 6 and followed the plows out on a clear morning that can only happen in the high dry mountain ranges of Wyoming. The dry snow crunched and squeaked…but more than that it sparkled like someone had flung glitter over the hills and valleys. There are few sights that are more breath taking than freshly fallen snow on a day when the sky is achingly blue and there is nothing buy white in every direction as far as the eye can see. It seems like the whole world has been washed clean and can start over new. The air has a crisp quality about that burns the lungs but also makes you want to breath deep as if you could inhale the freshness and turn it into something tangible. It makes you want to live a little closer to the Earth and spend more time out side where the distractions are less engaging and the quiet moments stretch to span hopes and dreams.
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