Afflicted as I am by an annoying compulsion to take a picture of nearly everything I see that is in any way remotely interesting, driving from Denver to San Diego can become quite the torturous ideal.
For passengers, that is.
Me, I love it. This time out, which was trip number 26 or 27 in the past decade, I was flying solo. However, I was on a fairly strict schedule, so stopping to take what would possibly be the 1,000 pic of the view from the Capital Reef rest area was not going to be practical.
Which is why it was a godsend that I had to work late, as that led to me leaving Denver at 6:30 in the evening, and that, of course, meant I was driving the 230 mile stretch of I-70 from the Colorado border to the interchange with I-15 in the middle of the night.
I-70 out of Colorado west through Utah is a very lonely stretch of road. Remember those old cartoons featuring vultures perched on signs in the desert, sloppily painted warnings advising that the last chance for gas within 100 miles was just ahead?
This stretch of the Federal Interstate system is the inspiration for those cartoons, and they are based on reality.
I drove straight through, not stopping until I reached the rest stop on I-15 just beyond Parowan. At 4:30 am.
I had hoped to have the stamina to make it to Vegas before needing a rest, but that was not to be. I pulled into a parking spot as far away from a light cam as I could get, adjusted the seat back as far back and flat as I could, and was asleep in seconds.
The noise of long-haul truckers firing up their rigs to get back on the road woke me less than two hours later. I lay back in that half-awake, half-asleep state we all know for about a half hour before finally getting up and out of the car and staggering to the rest stop facilities to splash some cold water on my face.
Only two hours from Vegas. I would eat breakfast there. Casino buffet food - yum.
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