Ensign Peak - Salt Lake City, Utah

Easy drive today. Four hundred miles to Salt Lake City. The scenery enroute was fantastic and the drive was smooooth. No tickets and minimal speeding.

Zak is my buddy from couchsurfing this summer and the long driving trip to Key West and the east coast. He lives in Salt Lake City and now I am surfing at his place. His roomates are cool, one of them is into film and tv production. We saw a pretty crazy movie called Fantastic Mr. Fox. It is the new movie by Wes Andersen from Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Limited fame.  Zak treated to pizza at a great dive place in college town, it was great.   Lastly we hit a great spot called Ensign Peak which offered a fantastic view of the entire city.

Lone Tree, I-80 Wyoming

Today was first day and the longest drive of the trip. About 725 miles. Nebraska sucked as always, and I got a warning speeding ticket just before I snuck out of the state. The temperature got progressively colder as I climbed into the mountains in Wyoming, bottoming out at 17F just as I got to Laramie.

Just chilling with Max in Laramie writing this post. Max has been a couchsurfer for the last year. When my friend Zak found out I was headed this way he said I have to surf at Max’s place in Laramie. The place is great. Good movies and thanksgiving leftovers!

I got a few good pictures on the way today. Editing them on the laptop sucks so I am going to work on them tomorrow when I can sit down and really give it my full attention.

I love driving by myself! Tomorrow Salt Lake City!

Tomorrow I am embarking on a three week west coast driving trip. The plan is to go to Portland and then drive the 101  (Pacific Coast Highway) to Los Angeles. From there over to Pahrump, NV to visit my dad then a couple of days in Vegas. From there Grand Junction Colorado, Denver, Lincoln NE then back home to Des Moines. I plan on taking a lot of photos and video. I am couch surfing or staying with friends the whole way so expenses should be minimal. Tortillas and peanut butter with honey are the staple of the trip. I am going to try and blog every night.

Overnight towns are

Laramie, Wyoming – one night /Salt Lake City – two nights

Boise, Idaho – one night /Portland, Oregon – three nights

Eureka, California – one night /San Francisco, California – two nights

Los Angeles, California – two nights/Las Vegas, Nevada – two nights

Pahrump, Nevada – three nights/Grand Junction, Colorado – one night

Denver, Colorado – one night /Lincoln, Nebraska – one night

HOME !

WordPress is a fantastic blog platform. It is very easy to use, so easy that it inspires people to start a blog practically on a whim. This leads to blogs that are started and then not maintained. Unfortunately my blog has fallen into that category. My last post was in August. That is completely a slacker attitude. I am driving a three week road trip starting tomorrow (Sunday November 29th). I vow to write a daily blog of the trip starting with an overview to follow this post. I will toss in some stories from this wonderful summer to boot.

Mark Miner