Road Trip, Part 3: Cruising to a Stop

Today was the last and longest day of driving in my seven-week road trip: 6 and 1/2 hours all the way from Montana through the entire eastern flank of Idaho to Salt Lake City, Utah, stopping only to fill the tank and empty the bladder. 

The first 200 miles was an easy drive on straight roads through potato fields left and right. The kind of unremarkable landscape you’d expect in a state best known for this lowly tuber, though really I should not scoff, for the diet of an average person in the first decade of the 21st century included about 33 kg (73 lbs) of potatoes per year, and it is the world's fourth-largest food crop (after maize, wheat, and rice).  So the citizens of Idaho are justifiably smug about their spuds: 

The state motto adorns the license plates.

                                     

Of course Idaho has a potato museum!

 

I am thankful that my red chariot, though very simply equipped (not even cruise control), carried me safely the whole 3,094 miles (4,979 kms) I put on the odometer.  There was no run-in with a large mammal or law enforcement; no speeding or parking ticket; no fender bender or mechanical failure.   She and I savored the freedom of the open road and the simple life. 

Until now: The 8-lane heavily trafficked interstate highway into town was a shuddering wake-up call: You’re not in Oz any longer!  Salt Lake is by far the largest city I have been in since leaving Zurich.  These are the first buildings over three stories high, the first European-made automobiles, the first men in suits and women in stilettos that I have seen in 10 weeks.  There’s the noise, the bustle, the neon, the crowded spaces, the exhaust fumes, and worst of all, the light pollution -- the stars are gone!  Of course they’re still there but obscured by all the manmade edifices of your typical metropolis.

  

I have always considered myself a true-blue city-phile but am now experiencing a slight case of urban heebie-jeebies and maybe beginning to give some credence to the claim that you can take the girl out of the country but not the country out of the girl….