Day 5: Ontario to Santa Barbara, California

As planned, we drove through LA early this morning, a Sunday. Thus the traffic was not terrible, and we could enjoy the mist or maybe smog that was almost concealing the mountains. We had no trouble finding our temporary campus cottage by the sea, making contact with the Sunday manager (who met us at the office as promised), and unloading the car.

By noon, we were established, by two we had found a place to eat lunch, a farmers' market with local produce, and a supermarket with staple supplies, so our shared kitchen is stocked with a few days' food.  Our suitcases are unpacked, our bicycles are assembled, and we hope we'll find a place to view the eclipse. Unfortunately there's a lot of coastal fog today, we plan to drive up the hill to see what we can see.

We'll be in this location for a week, then on to a more conventional apartment.

Day 4: Nephi, Utah, to Ontario, California

Utah scenery is breathtaking. Huge fields in the well-irrigated basin south of Salt Lake City look abnormally fertile, as the jagged hills and towering mountains are clearly very dry. Irrigation waters come from an aquifer which will eventually be depleted, causing everything to be arid again.

After Las Vegas, the highway turns towards the southwest, crossing a corner of Arizona. The road follows the canyons of the Virgin River (downstream from Zion National Park). Sometimes the road seems to be suspended on pylons above the river, sometimes the river is next to the road. At the end just before the California border, the road and river pop out of the mountains and onto the still-sloping plane. Looking back, you can't even see where the road enters the mountainside.

 A view of the river and the satellite map of that location:

 


 

The Mojave Desert is big, with Joshua trees and chaparral and very few places to stop. We quickly arrived at our final overnight destination: an airport hotel in Ontario, California. Tomorrow we hope to get to Santa Barbara in time to get into our temporary residence (duration: a week) and to see the solar eclipse. After that, we'll have an apartment for the duration of Len's workshop.

Day 3: Cheyenne to Nephi, Utah

We left our motel this morning humming "Goodbye, Old Paint, I'm a-leaving Cheyenne." (See previous post). We were again on I-80, which has been our road since Chicago -- we switched to I-15 some time this afternoon.

On the wide plains in the middle of Wyoming we saw many pronghorn antelope grazing in fields along with the cows. We couldn't figure out if they were wild or if ranchers kept herds of them.

Western Wyoming is beautiful. We enjoyed a number of views of snow-caps and deep valleys -- but the road is very straight and fast. Coming down from the heights as we entered Utah, the road continues to be well-engineered and wide, but more curvy. On the 6% grades there's an extra lane for large trucks, for which the speed limit is 40 mph.  Frequent heavy rain squalls made it even less fun to drive.

The picture above is the open road, I-15, south of Salt Lake City -- the heavy traffic and congested roadside businesses here contrast enormously with the really open empty spaces in Wyoming. Tonight we are in a motel in Nephi, a bit south of Provo.

Leaving Cheyenne

Day 2: Des Moines to Cheynne

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Oversize loads of prefab houses, gigantic construction equipment, and outlandishly large tires on flatbed trailers seemed to be everywhere on the highway today, along with frequent construction projects. The scenery varied, beginning with rolling hills in western Iowa. Atop the highest hilltops we saw wind farms with rows of huge white modern windmills.

On the planes and hillsides of Nebraska and Wyoming we saw huge watering rigs that traverse the fields. The wind was blowing much of the day, and there was one quick violent rainstorm in Nebraska. The cloud formations producing the rain were deep blue with rain streaks connecting clouds and fields. Lots of cows.

 

We ate dinner a couple of miles from our hotel in Cheyenne, downtown near the vast rail yards and the repurposed railroad station from 1887, now a museum --

Day 1: Ann Arbor to Des Moines

From Ann Arbor to Des Moines is neither varied nor very interesting. Beautiful barns and silos, plowed fields (probably going to be corn), baled hay on still-green hillsides. That's about it. Move on, nothing to see here, folks!