We interrupt this series....

Still some more posts to come on the cross-country road trip, for those still curious about our Northwest to Southeast blitz across this vast country.

Meanwhile, a quick here-and-now on the best of our new home -- a balmy sunrise beach walk in October, Melbourne Florida.

Cross-Country Road Trip: PNW > Melbourne FL -- Day 3

Exiting South Jordan Utah toward NW Colorado, the Wasatch Mountains were emerging from the morning shadow.

Wasatch Mountains, Utah to Larkspur Colorado
Just as Wayne was a great captain in picking cool and less-traveled places to go cruising, he's every bit as talented when it comes to road trip planning.  Be forewarned -- navigating some of these routes are not for the faint of heart.  Fortunately, Wayne is as a superb driver as he is a captain when it comes to tackling the tricky stuff.

Sadly, we allowed only 8 days between my last day of work in Oregon, and Wayne's first day of work in Florida, and one of those 8 days was reserved for family time. 

Family as much or more than anything else is what drew us back to the USA after cruising.

A recent visit to Dad since our Florida move.  He's cracking up over a loosely-played game of casino.
Dad's one of the few remaining WWII bombadeers.

Being closer to my now 94-year-old Dad in large part prompted our move from the Pacific Northwest to Florida.  Dad lives in Sarasota, Florida, about a 3 1/2 hour drive from where Wayne landed viable work.  We would've been closer to Mom, who lived in Delray Beach, but Mom surprised us all by checking out earlier this year at 87 years young.

Visiting Mom and her boyfriend Richard, in happier times. Wakodahatchee Wetlands 2017, Delray Beach Florida.

We were also looking forward to seeing my brother Mark and his wife, my favorite sister-in-law in the whole world, Patty, in Larkspur, Colorado.  We planned to arrive on the eve of our third day of travel.

That day was a series of a scenic routes, beginning by exiting a Salt Lake City burb then weaving into the Wasatch Mountains, past Heber City.  

Wasatch Mountains Bridal Veil Falls in morning shadow.

Our first stop of the day was Bridal Veil Falls -- well worth a hike if we'd had the time for it.  We oohed and ahhed over the falls and the massive stone thrusts we wove our way through.

All too soon we zipped past some sizable reservoirs, and skirted the tourist town of Heber City.  Heber City boasts the closest airport to the internationally famed Sundance indie film festival and is a winter wonderland in its own right.  There was no hint of the area's oft bitterly cold, snowy winters. on that Indian summer day at the tail end of a record-breaking hot season.

The Wasatch mountains gave way to arid Colorado country, with low buttes and dry, rolling hills.  We chuckled over the kitchy statues in Dinosaur, Colorado.

This fellow had some equally silly looking brethren scattered around
the tiny tourist town of Dinosaur Colorado.

Unfortunately, we also didn't allot any time to explore Dinosaur National Monument, a National Park.  Thousands of dinosaur fossils await exploration there.

We did stop briefly to admire the painted hills in the area, a notably rare worthwhile lookout point on that stretch of relatively desolate highway.

To get a better sense of the possibilities this area offers if you are able to take the time, check out Road Trip Explore's coverage.  They do a great job capturing the general scenery, fossils, petroglyphs, flora and fauna.

Or for a more surreal perspective, William Horton's photography conjures up gobsmackingly gorgeous photos of the Dinosaur area.  


I confess -- other than the painted hills -- we did not see much in the way of engaging scenery on our drive-by.  That would've likely added at least a day in detours to see.  And of course perfect timing of year and day to get the Horton's magical light and color.

Hooray!  There was actually a highway pullout that gave us an opportunity to step out and take a picture
of the stunning painted hills in the Dinosaur area.

Eventually we cruised into more verdant Colorado cattle country... green rolling hills, bright red barns, herds of cattle.  Before our planned high point of the day,  Berthoud Pass, we encountered a some roadwork delays.  On the whole, we were lucky; there were few roadwork delays our entire trip.

This stretch in Colorado was one of the few delays for construction in our entire cross country trip.
This one was about 20 minutes.

Ironically, Berthoud Pass was named for a wagon-train era railroad engineer who decided the area was not good for a railroad.  Edward Berthoud discovered this steep, mountain pass shortcut with a colleague and observed while it wasn't ok for railroads, it would work for wagon trains.  As a result today's cars switchback their way through this scenic area as part of highway 40 that crosses the continental divide, peaking out at a lofty 11,300 ft. 

Berthoud Pass, aspen in the foreground a ribbon of golden aspen festoons the evergreens along the slope.

Beautiful as it is,  Berthoud Pass did not beat out my two other top favorite US alpine roads.  

Montana and Wyoming's Beartooth Pass (US Route 212) reaches a slightly less lofty 10,947 ft. but offers more open views.  Or maybe it's simply that we weren't as rushed when we took it, and we traversed it earlier in the year, when wildflowers were in their full glory.

While a definite nail-biter, Glacier Park's Logan Pass -- aka the Going to the Sun Road, is a true stunner, and Glacier is my favorite US National Park. Built in 1933, "the Sun" is another continental divide crosser.  It offers incredible unobstructed views on the precipice of massive drop-offs with the added excitement of hairpin turns.  You'd never guess it's "only" 6,646 feet high.   Next time I go to  Glacier, I'd rather plan it so everyone can sightsee without navigating, thanks to the park's ample supply of antique red busses

Green and golden aspen leaves mixed, as we traveled Berthoud Pass on the cusp between summer and fall. 
We passed that way September 11, 2018.

Comparisons aside. it's easy to understand why Berthoud Pass is a summer recreation mecca for hiking, fishing, backpacking and camping, as well as the way to get to perfect powder skiing in the winter.

Colorado's known for its glorious golden aspens in the fall. When Wayne didn't want to stop in the Steens for me to take pictures of the aspen as the sun descended, he promised to make up for it in Colorado.  True to Wayne's promise, the aspen of Berthoud pass delivered.

A dab of organe in these aspen were a hit of even greater fall glory yet to come.

Duly sated. from there it was off to Larkspur, arriving not long before sunset, to just "hang out," rest our road-weary bodies, and  spend the night and next day with family.

Cross-Country Road Trip -- PNW > Melbourne FL: Day 2 Southeastern Oregon to Utah's Wasatch Mountains

Smoke made for a fiery dawn if not a view of Steens Mountain.  Frenchglen, Eastern Oregon.

Even early  morning, the Steens Mountain view still eluded us, secreted away in the eye-tingling, throat scratching, smoke-tinged air.  It was time to move on.  In a week, Wayne would be starting work in Florida.

Our destination for the day was the base of the Wasatch Mountains, in the Salt Lake City, Utah area -- a reasonable halfway point between Frenchglen and Larkspur Colorado, where my brother and his wife live.

My car was a bit worse for the wear traveling the unpaved roads into the Steens the night before.
We stopped at the first car wash we could find... which was a good ways into the day, in Winnemucca, Nevada.

We bid this desolate stretch of Oregon goodbye... Highway 140 is populated more by power poles than people or trees.

Before long we found ourselves crossing the border into blink-and-you'll-miss-it mining town of Denio Nevada, which reaped the rewards of liberal liquor and gambling laws "just across the border" as well as offering the delights of fishing and hot springs.  Denio's current population is less than 50.

Denio, Nevada.  A bustling border town. Not.

We passed rapidly through long stretches of sparsely populated country... predominantly dessert-like grasslands, punctuated with buttes and mesas, the ocaissona cattle ranch and farm.  We wondered what stories the dilapidated farms and shacks could tell us.  

Shacks in Denio, Nevada. They looked like they'd been there a long time.  The town was settled in 1885.

The towns were tiny and far flung.  If American flags were an indication, pride in our country beat as strongly in the hearts of those who lived there as the harsh sun beat down on the prairies and Badlands.

Still, driving through Australia struck us as more desolate and isolated.  In the US, there was more homesteads and ranches (even if some looked abandoned for decades), and more trucks on the road. The spaces between places were far more vast in Oz.

We stopped briefly in the historic town of "one moccasin" Winnemucca, where we finally found a car wash, grabbed gas and groceries.  Casinos, built long before Indian reservations began building them as tribal money-makers, served a reminder that Nevada is the only place in the country where the oldest profession in the the world is still legal.

Not much sign of life on Monday morning when we cruised past this kitchy little casino in Winnemucca, Nevada. 
It's the big town and county seat of Humbolt county, town population 7,000-something.

At Winnemucca, we regretfully left those more personable two-lane highways and quirky tiny towns behind for burning miles on I-80, still seeking curiosities where we could find them to alleviate the boredom of too many miles in too short a time.

In Nevada, for example, we couldn't figure out why there were three beautifully built overpasses to nowhere.  It was obvious they were built in recent years, and at substantial expense.  Were they pork barrel political projects?  With some Googling, we eventually discovered the overpasses's purpose -- to provide a safe crossing for wildlife, reducing traffic fatalities for both humans and 4-legged creatures.  

The overpasses were spurred by Nevada Department of Transportation research and based on the success of similar crossing put into place in the 90s in Banff, Canada.... 
Each year in Nevada, vehicle collisions with wild and domestic/feral animals result in more than 500 reported crashes, cost the Nevada public over $19 million in crash costs, and kill an estimated 5,032 wild animals.... In a continual effort to provide the safest roadways, the Nevada Department of Transportation and partners such as the Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Nevada Department of Wildlife are installing safety crossings.

Research on Nevada's Elko county highway 93 overpass claims traffic fatalities were reduced by 80%.

Crossing into Utah,  the brown and tawny colored earth shifted mineral composition. If the temperatures hadn't been in the 90s, we might have thought we were traveling through snow.  Eventually as we approached the vast Great Salt Lake, salt crusted the water's edge like rock salt gone amuck on a margarita glass rim.  

Salt crystals and gypsum cast a snow-like landscape across Utah's arid Salt Lake area.
This image was pilfered from Pixnio. 

We drank in the scenery at high speed; even if we'd wanted to pull over to snap a scenic shot, there were no scenic overlooks we could access easily just off the highway. 

Our Highway 80 view of the Great Salt Lake, Utah looked similar to this.   Image from borrowed from Flickr

The Great Salt Lake. This 1,700 square mile, prehistoric lake once covered most of Western Utah.

The same lack of scenic overlook dilemma continued as we sped through the Bear River Mountains, the Northern tip of the Wasatch Mountain Range, and the Western portion of the Rocky Mountains.

Wasatch Mountains.... Image liberated from Wikipedia.

It was dusk as we rolled our stiff, road-weary bodies out of the car into SleepInn, in the crowded South Jordan burbs of Utah, relieved with a gorgeous view of the Wasatch range.  We supped at the R&R BBQ next door, chock-a-block full of kids, not surprising in the heart of Mormon country. Despite overstuffing ourselves, we waddled out with plenty of leftovers for the next day's travel.

Location Location
We are currently settling into Palm Bay, Florida.  This post is a retrospective of our recent cross-country drive here.  This post particular post covered our travels on September 10, 2018.  More to come.

Rainbow over saw palmettos across from Coconut Point Beach Melbourne, Florida.
Site of the  monthly 1st Saturday beach cleanup.