Day Three: Does Salt Lake City rhyme with Tipperary?

It’s a LONG WAY … no, a LOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNGG way from Keystone, South Dakota to Salt Lake City (Utah, just in case you weren’t sure.)  We left at 7:15 AM, and pulled up to our hotel at 6:45 PM.  I’ve been misstating the number of miles we traveled to some people … so let me clarify: the total number of miles traveled on this leg of the trip was …. ::drumroll::

::ring the bell, give that woman a kewpie doll!::

We made a few stops for the restroom … and of course the obligatory stops for the state lines … First up, Wyoming!

Again, I do blame sun glare, but these were the first attempts by our company photog…

      

This one wasn’t bad …

But, in the end, TEAMWORK prevailed … Gerry held up Lulu, and I snapped the picture!

I am quite certain that there are glorious parts of the state of Wyoming, and I’m not saying that what we saw weren’t, but I will say that we saw a WHOLE LOT of Wide Open Spaces. 🙂  The Wyoming I experienced on this trip looked like this …

and this …

with a whole lot of these …

       

Every so often, we’d see something kinda cool …

Or amusing …

(and, YES, it’s a real place: I looked it up later, and in 2010, the sign read, “Population 1”.  The town has quadrupled its population in only 7 years!!  LOL)

And we stopped for lunch at an adorable spot in the bustling metropolis of Casper, WY. (And you may hold all of the Casper the Friendly Ghost jokes, because I’ve heard ’em all from Gerry. 🙂

And the driving went on & on & on, until we made it to the Utah state line!  The kind folks of the Utah Highways provided a more than lane-wide shoulder to pull off.

Gerry: Wait! Is this an entrance ramp???

Me: No … it’s for doofuses like us who have to pull over to get the picture of the state line!

Lulu was as cheerful as ever to oblige!

This is my very first trip to ANY PART of the US Northwest, and I had certain preconceived ideas of what I would see once in Utah.  I thought I might see landscape like this …

or this …

or even this …

But, in reality, eastern Utah, leading to SLC was way more like this:

Many, many miles of this.  Not unpleasant … no complaints from us.  Speaking of many, many miles … the posted speed limit on much of I-80 in Wyoming & Utah was:

Yep.  80 mph.  I must reiterate here how GRATEFUL, GRATEFUL, GRATEFUL I was to have Gerry along to share the experience AND the driving.  NOT a luxury I had last summer, and given our traveling pace, truly a necessity on this trip.  It is my opinion, however, based on many  relatively local shared car rides in the past, and observing the speedometer while in the passenger seat on this trip, that ol’ Gerr just literally COULD NOT BRING HIMSELF to drive 80 mph.  He certainly kept up, and did more than his share of the driving on this leg, but once a Right Lane Driver, always one.  We arrived safe & sound. 🙂

And so … 11 1/2 hours after heading out … we pulled into the parking lot of the Crystal Inn & Suites in downtown Salt Lake City …

… and gave each other a High Five!