More Utah

Southeastern Utah is like Mars. Nothing but rocks and dirt and completely remote, an alien landscape if I ever saw one. The northern part of the state feels familiar--giant pointy mountain ranges, grassy meadows, green forests. Southwestern Utah is somewhere between the two. Rocky, but green at the same time.

We drove down I-15 from Salt Lake City to the bottom of the state--which, p.s., is one of the prettiest and emptiest stretches of interstate I've had the pleasure of driving on. Interstate driving is lovely when people can stay the hell out of my way. I've never seen so many RVs in my life. I always wondered where people with RVs drive those things, and now I know. They all go to Utah. Driving on all the twisty two-lane mountain roads would be a blast, with an empty highway and a high-powered, high-performance, low-slung automobile. Unfortunately, I'm driving them behind slow-moving big rigs and RVs in a P.O.S. rental car. I've nearly had a stroke several times. Road rage: it isn't pretty.

But I digress. We spent Thursday exploring Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, which contained far more greenery than the previous national parks. We also drove to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which is more remote but much more impressive than the more touristy South Rim. I've been to both now. The South Rim has more stuff (restaurants, hotels, campgrounds, amenities) but the North Rim gives you a true sense of the width of the Grand Canyon. We saw it stretch for miles, past the horizon, and even though it was cloudy and trying to rain, it was still awe-inspiring. The drive is two hours of very remote two-lane roads, through a national forest, and there are only three hotels and two restaurants within an hour and ten minutes of the North Rim. Naturally, they're all booked 13 months in advance. But we managed to find dinner on the edge of a large meadow where wild bison were roaming, and where we learned of Michael Jackson's death. RIP, Micheal. Heaven needs more freaky people.

We found a hotel room back across the Utah border and drove to Vegas the next morning. Hello, civilization! I missed you. The first order of business was to clean off all the baked-on bug goo on the car. The next was to find a hot bath, a drink, and a civilized meal, in that order. We met up with another old and dear friend of mine, in town for a geekfest. We dined at Bouchon, my first Thomas Keller restaurant, on veal cheeks and sturgeon and mussels and pork shoulder with a lovely bottle of white burgundy. It almost made up for the fact that the hotel room offered far fewer amenities than the Motel 6, for about 30 times the price. The Motel 6 had a refrigerator, microwave, coffee maker, free breakfast, free wi-fi, and more cable channels. Vegas hotel rooms have none of those things, with about three free cable channels. Not even free wi-fi. So Vegas, thank you for the meal, but I'm done with you forevermore. I have standards, and one of them is free wi-fi.