Great Westward Push Day 13 (Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2002 — Salt Lake City, Utah to Moab, Utah): Small Towns, Big Canyons (and the Push Reaches Its Westernmost Point!)

 

Approaching and leaving Salt Lake City, huge billboards are visible from the interstate advertising bail-bonds agencies.  I guess a lot of people around here get arrested.  One firm offers a free “jail sucks” T-shirt with every bond; another offers a free trip to Vegas.  Uh, what?

 

Salt Lake is a beautiful city, with its wide streets (designed for teams of oxen, apparently) and impressive buildings, a real city (my first one in a while), and I wouldn’t mind returning.  I am already thinking of using it as a base of operations to see all the parks and other things in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona that I just don’t have time to see now.

 

Sunshowers have been the order of the day now for a few days, and today is no exception — rain and clouds alternate as I head south on I-15, getting sort of a late start to the day after eating from the questionable breakfast buffet at the Ramada.  “Homemade,” the waitress/cook tells me of the brownie I inspect.  It’s good, very chocolaty — not a normal breakfast food, but this is certainly not a normal day.

 

I drive through ground-kissing clouds; as the landscape changes, with hills and mountains above and below me, the clouds also bob and weave down and up.  It’s a remarkable sight, low low clouds for miles.

 

There has been road work everywhere I’ve gone — even within Badlands and Yellowstone — and there is road work on I-15.  In Idaho yesterday, Billy Joel’s “Don’t Forget Your Second Wind” came on just as we exited a work zone.

 

Out here there are a lot of signs that say “bump,” “rough road,” &c.  But these signs are fastidious — the bumps, and rough roads, are tiny, tiny things that wouldn’t even register on the radar screen of a traffic engineer on the East Coast.  I expect to see soon a sign that says, “Slight pavement irregularity ahead.”  If Eastern streets were held to the same standards, every single block in Manhattan, at least, would have to be plastered with signs.

 

I pass through the town of Scipio, Utah, as I leave I-15 for US 50 heading east; this, not Salt Lake City, is actually the westernmost point of the Push.  There is nothing here — boarded-up markets, no sign of life.  Its wretchedness is typical of the small towns I’ve seen.  How anyone would or could live like this I do not know.  My friend Sara later tells me that this part of the country works with its own timelines, so towns can spring up and be abandoned within decades, unlike on the East Coast or in Europe, where timelines are longer.

 

I see more cars on the road with clothes rods stretched between their back windows.  Are these traveling salesmen?

 

Every tiny place I pass through — including Scipio, Utah, even though it is practically a ghost town in its wretchedness — has at least one motel, often a Super 8 Motel.  Why?  (“Scipio, Utah?!” I write in my notebook.)

 

Out this way, also, I note the simple, flag-waving patriotism that forms an integral part of the stereotypical American.  “God Bless America,” many signs proclaim, proud even though they are often dingy, still reflecting a post-9/11 mood that the East has, to a much greater extent, already forgotten.  I can much better understand the likes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld when they use words like “evil,” and say things like “it confuses the dickens out of me that Saddam Hussein is still in power” (Rumsfeld, in fact, said something similar on TV a day or so ago).  This is old-fashioned, good-vs.-evil Americanism, the “we’re special, we’re different, we’re all-righteous” attitude that differentiates American nationalism from the other sorts that exist, if they do exist in any comparable kind of way.

 

Heading east on US 50 about to join I-70, I am alarmed by a sign announcing a dearth of services for the next 109 miles, so I stop for a bathroom visit and a Diet Dr Pepper, actually bypassing the first gas station I see, which is in a horribly questionable state, with wrecked cars parked in front of where gas pumps apparently used to be, and go to the second.  As I leave, I hold the door to the mini-mart open for a guy moving in — “Thanks!” he says, sounding genuinely surprised.

 

I-70 east is an amazing drive, fully worthy of the yellow “scenic” highlight accorded it by my Rand McNally atlas.  The red hills and cliffs are astonishing, and I stop several times at scenic pulloffs.  Every time, I accelerate again to about 80 mph, and after every stop, I end up passing the same RV-pulling pickup truck, the driver of which must have begun to wonder, after about the fourth time I passed him, what the hell I was doing to constantly end up behind him again.

 

“Frequent deer and elk crossings”; “watch for rocks on roadway”; and then the road, wending between rocky hills, sprouts guardrails, suddenly becoming a sort of amusement park ride.  The red hills are striated sedimentary rock, covered with shrubs & scrub — too green to be a desert, I write in my book, “what do you call this terrain?”

 

Going through one of the many impressive canyons, I follow a sign’s advice and tune in for information on an AM station, hearing about the historic importance of this area.  I am also told the number of the Utah highway patrol (it’s 896-6471); the radio voice says that, as in times past, help can be far off in this area, although usually not much more than an hour away.  What?

 

At about exit 89, the sun breaks out.  The sun, hills, cliffs — everything is beautiful.

 

As I am doing 85 mph, a Hyundai Santa Fe rockets past.

 

The canyons here are sort of like Badlands, in South Dakota, but they’re bigger, darker, and I’m inside!  It’s really astonishingly beautiful — and I’m reminded of the fat man in Chicago (Roger Ebert) using that same phrase to describe either Mia Sara in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” or Ione Skye in “Say Anything.”  (I don’t remember which it was.)

 

At about mile 137, the view becomes spectacular — specTACular, as I quickly amend it in my book.  This is a brake test area, too, with a 6% down grade.  At 3721.2 miles on my trip, I write, “marvelous view — one of the best I’ve ever seen.”

 

Miles afterward, the view remains BREATHTAKING (as I write, enthusiastically if not coherently) — huge red & orange & gold rocks, at all angles, like ships coming up, elemental forces at play, and here I am — what am I doing here?  How the hell did I — anyone — get here?  Unbelievable.

 

At mile ~165, snow-capped mountains (which I will later learn are the La Sal) become visible. I write, “Awesome!”  I am suddenly reminded that, on clear days, in the evenings as the sun was setting in the summer of ’98, when I took the train to work in Manhattan every day and then back to Hicksville, I could go to the top of the parking garage at Hicksville station and, if conditions were just right, see the very tops of the World Trade Center towers, some 25 miles away.  A different time.

 

Listening to Chuck Berry, singing about kids busting out of school and heading to their hangouts to listen to rock-‘n’-roll on the jukebox, leaving their repressive home and school environments behind, it occurs to me that that sort of thing really doesn’t happen too much anymore.  Sure, in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, and even going into the ‘80s with punk and the ‘90s with grunge, teens rebelled — but nowadays, the youth/rebellion culture has been, like, incorporated into mainstream society.  Just look at what kids today wear to school.  You dig?

 

The approach to Moab is dramatic — red, striated canyons, which from a distance look built, as they have the color and the texture of brick.  But no; only the power lines, the road, the rail line, and the fences that trail off into the distance have been built.  What hubris.  The La Sal Mountains are illuminated by the sun, in the distance.  The descent into the Moab canyon is windy.

 

I go on up into Canyonlands, arriving about 4:20 or so — the ranger at the entrance station is pretty easy-going.  In I go, taking in some of the impressive views, but when it starts to rain, I immediately swivel the car around and head out.  An ominous dark line of thunderstorms has been visible for some time, and it’s now reached me.  I retreat, having taken many pictures incorporating the last remnants of blue sky.

 

It’s too bad I don’t have more time in Canyonlands, and too bad I don’t have more time in general for hiking, exploring, and that sort of thing.  Touring by car is fun, but it only scratches the surface.  Have I mentioned that I’m already thinking about how I can use Salt Lake City, or Denver, as a future base from which to rent a car and then drive around seeing all the things I’ve missed on this trip?

 

As I approach Moab, the sky is almost black (not nearly time for sunset, mind you), and I see an enormous, crackling bolt of lightning come crashing out of the sky.  Whoa!

 

I check in at the Motel 6, which looks brand-new on the outside, at the edge of town, lacking landscaping.  The girl at the counter, inexplicably fumbling with her computer, declares, “Oh, I’m so stupid!”

 

I fuss in my room for awhile and then head out to explore Moab, stopping to ask the desk clerk where I can get the New York Times, as I’d seen some interesting articles on the web site but didn’t have the patience to read them all over a dead-slow dialup connection.  The girl looks at me levelly for a moment and then says, “This is a small town.”  I tell her that I’ve gotten bigger papers in smaller towns, but she doesn’t respond.

 

I drive about a mile and a half or so into downtown Moab, park, and walk around.  A bookstore clerk informs me soberly, “We don’t get the New York Times here in Utah.”  OK.

 

I eat dinner at a local pizza-type place, which has a pizza-and-salad buffet.  I read “Best Short Stories 2001.”  New Kids on the Block’s “The Right Stuff” plays in the background — America’s supreme boy band, ca. 1990.  Uh, come again?

 

After dinner, I notice that the National Park Service visitor center across the street is open, so I go over, buy some postcards, and then get some stamps from the machine in the lobby of the nearby post office.

 

I also stop in another bookstore to ask about the Times and am told I can get today’s Times tomorrow.  A diagram taped to the cash register illustrates how the Times gets from the Los Angeles printing press to Moab.  Interesting…

 

Back at the room, I write out some postcards and get my stuff together.  I also speak with Sara Copeland, who will be joining the Push on Friday.  We chat a bit about my Salt Lake City experiences, and I tell her about the people I call “More-Mons.”  I’m Jewish (nominally); she’s Methodist — our discussion is interesting.  We also go over hotel strategies for the Push’s final week, through Tennessee and North Carolina and Virginia and DC.  Looks like we’ll try Priceline for the hotels, a new experience for us both.  Woo hoo!

 

Today’s stats

Miles today: 357.9

Total miles: 3843.0

Noteworthy CDs: The Who, Nickel Creek, Howie Day, Bjork, Chuck Berry