Red Stone

Yesterday we decided to have a "resting day" today and not make journey forward from Moab. Moab has enough things to see and do to warrant two nights' stay, and we saved a day yesterday when we decided to skip Salt Lake City.

We started the morning early and went to see Arches National Park before the heat got too bad. Still it was warm enough :). There we had an opportunity to hike a bit, which was welcomed change from just sitting in the car! Even though we did only short and easy hikes, the thin air made us loose our breath.

After that, it was past noon and we decided to have a little R&R in our motel's pool area. Where we stayed for full 5 minutes and left again to see new stuff!

In the afternoon we saw Hole n' the rock, which was pretty strange (google it to see what it's about) and some amazing scenery again in Canyon Rim recreational area.

The most amazing picnic table spot I've ever seen was in there, at the Needles Lookout. Really empty, distance spot (not actually inside the National Park and probably that's why not so known, but the scenery was breathtaking. No point of taking pictures, they will never tell it all.

Total number of miles (during the resting day...): 245
Distance made good: 0
Car comment of the day: for the first time we washed the front part of the car. It was caked with insects. Leyla suggested we wouldn't wash it for the whole period of the trip to keep as a trophy of sorts, but we decided against it for aesthetic reasons.

Lady's life on the road

Here some female perspective to our road trip.

First, I just love the driving! Especially the morning, when you feel fresh and eager to get going. If I could choose, I would probably drive the first leg every morning (I haven't told Petteri, he is supposed to read my mind, isn't he? The best relationships are not based on talking, but reading each other's minds?). Patsy (the car) is also amazing (I cannot understand why she should not have a name only cause she cannot speak like Jaanika. Our dog and horse have names and I've never heard them speak...) Anyway, Patsy is made to please and planned for our comfort. I do like the automatic gears, even though they let me down when passing other cars, Patsy isn't too fast reading my mind either. She may be bit slow in her turns and not too sporty on the uphill drives, but she is a great companion on the long drives, which are plenty in this country, I would guess.

Other great companions are the different fragrant sprays, I do have one for body, one for hair,face and feet. I want to smell like flowers even after hours of driving! the facial spray, available in the Finnish pharmacies (Favora Virkistävä kasvosuihke) is a must for all long air trips, car trips and long days in the office, you can spray it over makeup and it makes you feel so good! You notice that the driving days need some practicing, especially in the amount of breaks, food and drinks to carry in the car, I do get really easily annoyed if I do not get something to eat when I get hungry (nälkäkiukku)... Luckily we are learning fast and the second day already was far easier than the first one. The basic thing is to listen to your self (and also Petteri) and not try to see too much or be too fast, stop whenever you feel like it.

It is also important that you see the things that interest you, luckily we share similar interests with Petteri! Now I need to go, continue some other time.

Salt lakes and canyons

When we left Ely this morning, we had not yet planned where to go exactly, we continued the loneliest road, and saw really amazing sights and after the Great Basin National Park we were pondering whether to continue to Salt Lake City, Dinosaur National monument (norther) or go to Moab. Somehow the 400mile detour to Salt Lake City just did not seem worth it (and now anyone who thinks otherwise, please don't tell us), so we decided to come to Moab and spend here probably two nights. Moab seems to be a nice little tourist town (in a good way) there is plenty of choice in restaurants, accomodation and shops. We decided that our criteria for motel includes now a pool, the temperature is getting high (and the chocolate we brought from Finland is melting away...) and dipping to the pool after the journey was just wonderful.

Oh, speaking of wonderful, we came across an amazingly cozy diner in tiny tiny city of Salina, Utah, Mom's Cafe. They were proud of their food and for a reason. Anyone ever getting chance to go to Salina, go there (and this is probably the only reason to go to Salina anyway). We have been quite lucky with our choices of restaurants and motels, they nearly all have had some special in them. Lucky us!

Best spots on the way apart from the ones mentioned:
- Dried salt lake (Servier lake if I remember correctly) - weird feeling to be on the shore with absolutely no one around
- The portion of US50 next to this lake - completely empty straight of at least 20 miles.
- I-70 east coming towards Green River - absolutely magnicifient scenery

Miles today: 302

We really should have brought a laptop with us

Mobile blogging is not all it's cracked up to be. Even though all hotels so far have had free wi-fi, the whole moblogging experience leaves us lacking a bit still. And the free-to-use computers in hotels are either so old or so badly managed that blogger and gmail and such don't seem to work (javascript, activeX etc problems).

Oh well, maybe it's not too late to buy an macbook or something here :) the problem of course in that are the keyboards :(. Nokia internet tablet maybe?

Loneliest road in america

We started our day with a 100-mile drive to lake Tahoe. We decided not to go through South Lake Tahoe as there were the wildfires still going. And as we reached Zephyr cove, we noticed some smell of smoke there also, as well as some smoke clouds around the south part of the lake.

From Lake Tahoe we aimed towards US50. After driving past Fallon we started to notice where the name comes from. Ridiculously long straigths of some 5 miles with nothing than shrubbery for miles and miles.

Some more interesting stops on the way:
- Petroglyphs in 2 separate locations (interesting also in the sense that a lot of parking space but no visitors other than us)
- Sand Mountain (200m high mountain of sand. Yep.)

Now we are staying in historic Hotel Nevada in Ely, NV, in a room next to one Jimmy Steward used at least once. We were planning to spend the night in Eureka, but we still had some energy to drive so decided to continue.

Oh, and PT Cruiser is a gift that keeps on giving: today we found out that it has satellite radio! The only qualm we have with it is that is has the turn radius of an ocean liner... even though today we did not need to turn too often, we just let the cruise control do the work and
we admired the emptiness.

Miles today: 428
of which on interstates: 0

First day behind!

After going to sleep at 7.30 pm and waking up at 5 am, we were ready to start our 6000-km journey. We headed out of SF at 8 am towards Yosemite National Park, where (after detouring to buy hiking shoes for me) we arrived at around 2 pm, having seen many different types of vistas on the way.

Yosemite was beautiful, especially the valley and El Capitan, but also Tioga pass road, which was the highest point where i've ever been in a car (~9600 ft ~ 3000 m).

Now we are at Bridgeport, a small town with surprisingly many motels Maybe the fishing here is especially good.

Total number of miles today: 295

Named our navigator's guidance woman voice as 'Jaanika'. This is mainly because she speaks almost-good finnish with certain pronunciation mistakes. Leyla also wanted to name the car in her burst of anthropomorhpication, but I refused.

Tomorrow.: the loneliest road through Nevada.

Safely in SF!

Now in san fransisco! the plane trip was ok, leaving in the early morning worked for us. the tomtom navigator found us fine to the motel, voice of a lady repeating again and again in Finnish"oikealle".

the motel was clean and nice, we decided to join immediately the rewards club, we might end up staying some nights with
the same chain and gain something... even though I have never experienced such thing, but this might be the first time. We plan to still go shop for some basics and go eat out and then most probably sleep.

For all you who are interested: the car is a PT Cruiser. I'm yet to discover the number of hp, as total driving today was about 5 miles Which was good since we had about 18 hours of solid uptime under our belts.

Ps. SF looks great!

Packing

We need to pack this weekend! The plan is to pack something warmish for California, something less for rest of the trip, but all tips greeted with delight, what we must remember to bring? Is there mosquitos?

Here some list we have created:

sunscreen
sunglasses
maps and other navigation aids (the digital version has proven to be quite diffucult to get working in my phone)
iPod with the car plugin
clothes

Setting up to go

Ok, using most of the last day at work to set up various ways to blog on the road, including email and mobile blogging.

Let's see if we can get it working.

Preparing for the trip

Lots of emailing, lots of web browsing, lots of printing.

Today we got loads of travel guides, even though we are getting to have a basic plan for the trip (and rightly so, just under a week to go!). But we'll still keep our options open for new possibilities on the road. Just today adjusted the plan to incorporate New Mexico.

The rough plan is as follows (click on the map for details):

Oh the joys of Web 2.0!

Couple of days to go, we'll post some stuff before leaving Finland... maybe