Thursday April 7
Despite grand intentions of getting an early start, we slept in again. We ate breakfast at the Four Seasons again, this time both of us opted for pancakes. James had the bourbon pancakes and I had the ricotta, ginger and lemon. They were actually a little disappointing. From the description I thought the ricotta was going to be in the pancakes, but instead there was just some spread on top and a little pitcher of lemon and ginger flavoured syrup. It tasted far better in my head.
Once we had packed we had the valet bring our car around and, once we'd jammed all our crap back in and set the GPS, we were on our way. Not far though. There was a train shop James wanted to go to before we left town and he promised he would be as quick as he could. After 75 minutes sitting in the carpark in a hot car (the weather was quite warm in Denver that day) I was over it and he's lucky he didn't take any longer or he would have been walking to Utah. We finally were on our way a bit after midday.
Lucky for him I soon got over my grumpiness thanks to the beautiful scenery. We went over the Rockies again and there was plenty to 'ooh' and 'aah' about. At lunch we committed a terrible sin and stopped at a Mc Donalds. I won't do that again soon - the buns on their burgers here are very sweet and I really didn't like my chicken burger thanks to that. At least the fries were edible. Our goal that day was to make it to Moab in Utah. Thanks to our late start we were unsure if we would make it so decided to play it by ear and were tossing up staying the night in Grand Junction, but made it there earlier than we thought so decided to eat dinner there and then push on. Dinner was at The Ale House and we were so glad we stopped. The food was great and James was rather fond of their beer too - he tried the Lucky U Pale Ale and even bought the shirt. The food was overwhelming though and neither of us was able to finish our meal. I think James is starting to feel less of a man for his inability to finish an American-size full rack of ribs. They are huge!We arrived in Moab about 8pm and checked into the Super 8 - daggy and a little musty, but very cheap and perfectly acceptable when you just need a bed. Hard to take after the Four Seasons though! I think we fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
Friday April 8
We finally managed to get ourselves up and away at a decent hour! The good thing about the 'cheap and cheerful' motels such as the Super 8 is the free breakfast. Once we'd had something to eat, packing was fairly quick and easy as we'd not really had time to make too much of a mess
and very soon we were on our way. First stop for the day was Dead Horse Point State Park. Sounds nice, huh? Wondering how it got its name? Well, apparently back in the wild west days, a bunch of cowboys used to use a corral at Dead Horse Point that only had a very narrow entry/exit to store horses they had caught. They fenced it off so they couldn't escape. Supposedly, one day they left the gate open so a group of horses they didn't want could get out while they were away. However, for some reason the horses didn't get out and they all died of thirst, even though the Colorado River was so close by.The landscape in the area is quite amazing - huge mountains where plates of rock have been shaped by the force of wind and water of the centuries. We made our way to the visitor's centre first to find out a little about the park and were blown away, almost literally, at how windy it
was. Little did we know, we hadn't seen anything yet. Dead Horse Point lookout was about another 10 minutes up the road so we drove up to check out the view. It's quite an amazing site - the Colorado River winds its way around the bottom of a deep canyon - but it's not easy to see when you have a face full of dirt and your own hair as the bone-chilling wind whips at you and threatens to blow you over backwards. It really wasn't that cold a day, but the chill factor in the wind was just nasty. We braved it for as long as we could before retreating to the car where it took me a good five minutes to get all the knots out of my hair.
Next stop was Arches National Park. Utah is famous for the natural arches in this park and apparently there's over 2000 of them. We didn't see nearly that many as we were pressed for time, but we did go and see Delicate Arch - probably the most famous - as well as a couple of others along the way. Once again we were nearly blown away by the wind. I guess I should have expected it seeing as it would take some pretty extreme forces to create the things we saw, but I obviously hadn't really thought about it. I would love to go back to Arches again and spend more time exploring the amazing landscapes.We ducked back in to Moab for a quick lunch at Denny's (cheap, but better than Maccas!) before we hit the road to Ogden. Ogden is just outside of Salt Lake City and I was doing my first lot of highway driving for this trip. Probably not the best leg to have started on... Utah drivers are terrible and got progressively worse as we neared Salt Lake. Everyone was speeding and weaving through the traffic - and I suppose it was even worse being the tail end of peak-hour on a Friday night.
We consulted with Jill and decided to stay at the Days Inn in Ogden - probably a little bit nicer than Super 8 but owned by the same company so kind of similar. The Days Inn boasts the largest indoor pool in Utah and it was fall of kids splashing around, having a marvelous time. Our room looked over the pool so we were grateful it closed at 10pm.
For dinner we decided to try Roosters Brewing Company and Restaurant in downtown Ogden. It's obviously a very popular place and we had to wait a few minutes before a table came available. James sampled their very cheekily named beer - Polygamy Pale Ale - and bought the shirt which proclaims 'I tried Polygamy in Utah' on the front... I decided to pass on the ladies version which had the choice of 'First Wife' or 'Sister Wife' on the front. I can't wait to see peoples' reactions when James wears his back home... The food was sensational and we had a great time.
Saturday April 9
Before we could leave Ogden we had to make two stops - first for coffee, and then Union Station so James could do some train-stalking... I mean railfanning. Once he'd satisfied himself he had
photographed every train and container possible, we hit the highway again and were soon on our way towards Missoula, in Montana. Once again, Utah drivers on the way out of Ogden were all nuts, but thankfully we soon left that all behind and were out on the open road again. It was a fairly uneventful day other than a few trains to photograph and we arrived in Missoula late afternoon. We had dirty laundry coming out our ears so our accommodation that night was to be decided on whether or not they had a laundry. After a few stops we decided on the Holiday Inn Express and it was definitely a step up from the Super 8 or Days Inn. The girl at the check-in desk was most curious as to why we were in Missoula and very nicely gave us a lovely room overlooking the river. Besides the laundry, one of the biggest plusses was the lift which meant we didn't have to attempt to cart our bags up a couple of flights of stairs like we had at other places. That was nice!For dinner we grabbed a table at the Iron Horse Brew Pub in town. James tried some local brews and I was stuck with a root beer as I'd left my ID at the hotel. Nice root beer, but they had a fabulous cocktail list that I wished I could have taken advantage of.
Sunday April 10
We were up earlyish to take advantage of the motel's hot breakfast (also a step up from the continental breakfast at other places) and coin laundry but didn't have far to drive that day and didn't have to check out until midday (nice!) so took advantage of the extra time to reorganise our bags and sort a few things out.
Once again there was trains to chase at Union Station Missoula before we could go anywhere, but we were soon on the road again.
Once again the drive was pretty, but fairly uneventful. The 93 skirted us around the edge of Flathead Lake which was just stunning. I can imagine it's particularly popular with families in the summer!Originally we had planned on heading straight to Essex from Missoula, but the hotel we were to stay at had no mobile reception and no in-room phones and I was expecting a call that night so we had to do a reshuffle. Whitefish is about an hour outside of Glacier National Park and a very cute and relaxed little town. We arrived mid afternoon and checked in at the Big Mountain Lodge, which used to be a Holiday Inn Express. Big Mountain Lodge boasts the biggest indoors waterslide - I was most disappointed that I didn't get to use it or the hot tubs out the back. Ah well... Once we'd unpacked and figured a few things out we went for a drive to see what trains we could see. We found a nice little loop that ran either side of the tracks and found a couple of trains just waiting around wanting to be photographed.
Once they had been shot from every angle we went back to the motel for a quick shower and change before grabbing dinner at a lovely little restaurant in town - Tupelo. Unfortunately they only had wine, no cocktails, but it was a lovely meal. Our waitress was most amused when she brought our meals out and had to ask James to stop trying to make out with my hand so she could put his meal on the table. Quite funny, but you had to be there. After dinner we wandered across the street to 'the tallest building in Whitefish' - it's a whole three floors!! - the Draught House, which is Great Northern Brewing Company's brew pub. We sampled a few beers and I was particularly taken by their Wild Huckleberry beer - beautiful! James took a liking to both it and the Big Sky IPA. It was a very quite night in town and we were pretty tired so we soon called it a night.
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