Leaving Manch Vegas

Bella started today practicing for the day's sleeping. I don't blame her! The Holiday Inn Express has nice sheets! This has been our favorite hotel by far.

Today was a long day of driving, taking us past Sturgis, SD and the thousands of bikers who are already there in anticipation of Bike Week next week. We made a 650 mile zig zag across Wyoming. Once again we pretty well stuck to the interstates, aside from a nice shortcut we found, taking about 3 hours off our trip and allowing us to avoid Cheyenne. Last time I was there I had to get a new clutch and my brother and I watched a plane crash into a mall. I wasn't too excited about going back.

Instead we cut across a moutain pass from Casper to Rawlins taking in some awesome scenery. It would be silly to try to put it into words, so I won't. Pretty breathtaking, though.


We did stop at a fairly amusing gas station along the way. And at another gas station (we visit a lot of these in a day) we met up with some peeps who were driving a similar set up to ours - 16 ft truck, car carrier...except it was BOO-Haul. The girl noticed the sweet Penske ride we're rockin' and asked Will if we'd had any problems with our truck. He proudly answered, "No," and was sad to hear her tale of woe. The couple, with a tiny baby were moving from Seattle to Denver and they were on their 2nd truck, which they'd had to reload themselves and were having problems with the new truck! She was more than jelly of our Penske, and the encounter was a fine reminder that U-Haul sucks. Don't use them, people.

We made it way further than we'd expected, to Evanston, WY. We just got back to the Day's Inn from dinner at the weirdest, creepiest, dingiest, nastiest customer-havin' restaurant ever. We felt validated in our bewilderment of the place as other obvious travelers came through making the same faces to each other that Will and I were. It was the kind of restaurant that murderers hang out in in independent films. We may have seen a few.

So we're just three miles from the Utah border and tomorrow expect to make it to Tahoe. We'll hang there for a couple nights and then we should be in the Bay Area in time to attend a friend's birthday party in Stinson Beach on Saturday. Crazy!

No one got the WG's from yesterday, which is kind of great, because we're too tired to think of one for today. Keep trying!