Geography Lessons

Daisy and I are in St. George, Utah. We will spend tomorrow driving to/from and in/around Bryce Canyon.

We've travelled 7,500 miles so far, and I've looked at lots of maps, used Google maps to plan parts of the trip, plugged in the GPS from time to time, and still had a lot of surprises and have learned a lot. My top 10 lessons:

Lesson 1: As L&C learned, the Rockies are WAY different from the mountains in the East. First of all, they are not one chain but multiple chains; second, they are WIDE. This leads to...

Lesson 2: Pay attention to topography. You need to know how high you are going and how the weather and road conditions differ at that altitude.

Lesson 3: Changes in altitudes, changes in attitudes (sorry, Jimmy Buffett): my first few days above a mile high really zapped me, and made a glass of wine very powerful! Since then I've gone up and down and feel fairly acclimated. But the other thing about altitude, especially in October, is SNOW. The best thing to do is talk to locals about weather conditions.

Lesson 4: GPS is great in traffic and to find your way back to your route when lost. Otherwise, it's annoying.

Lesson 5: I like wide-open places MUCH better than cities. That is one reason I nixed California to head through Oregon, back to Idaho, and into Utah. I pretty much avoided people/traffic from when I left home till Portland/Vancouver. Once again I can avoid all that till I get to Austin. Yeah!

Lesson 6: Wide-open spaces also mean wide-open speed limits: on the Interstates in the wetsern states in which I have travelled, speed limit is usually 75 mph, and in parts of Utah it is 80. Even secondary roads often have speed limits as high as 65 mph.

Lesson 7: Secondary (and tertiary) roads are usually better than Interstates--except when you are in Fed-Ex mode: you absolutely have to get there in a certain time frame.

Lesson 8: More on those wide-open roads and how they are different: there are cattleguards on Interstate ramps, which is good 'cause I'd hate to hit a cow; also semis pull three trailers in a row--would never be able to do that in eastern highways.

Lesson 9: Rest areas are nicer and cleaner in the West than back East--perhaps because of fewer users or maybe people are more respectful of others out here. On that note...less litter out here too. Maybe it's just fewer people in general.

Lesson 10: Stop at random historical markers and the like. You never know what you'll learn or what side trip you'll have an adventure on! I have vowed to to this as much as possible on this trip and it has paid off. I always wanted to...now I can and do!