Current Location: Denver Airport

On friday morning, I left Idaho Falls headed west on US 20, which met up with US 93 in the town of Arco, ID. From there I drove west and south into Craters of the Moon National Monument. It was a very hot day, well over ninety degrees, almost too hot to be wandering around lava flows and formations. Craters of the Moon is the remains of a relatively recent (2000 year old) volcano eruption, with hundreds of acres of lava flow and cinder hills. It is actually a very interesting place, the rock is all dark black, with fragile little plants growing on top with little soil.



Craters of the moon is a very interesting place, unlike anything I have seen. In the middle of the park, there is a huge cinder hill, with a hiking trail. Which I climbed.



Because of the heat, lack of shade, the elevation and not being in any shape whatsoever, it was a pretty tough climb to the top, and I was definitely winded. However, it was worth it, as the views from the top were very cool. Close to the cinder mountain, there were a few large craters. Inside a few of the craters, there was still snow! The snow was able to exist in the desert, because the craters were so deep, the sun barely reaches the bottom of the crater, and the lava rock provides very good insulation.



A crater with snow

All in all, the park does make you feel like you're on the moon. There were only about 5 other people in the park with me, and there was hardly a sound. I was mostly surrounded by my thoughts as I wandered through the park and climbed the craters. Nifty. You can see the rest of the photos here.

From the craters, I continued west and south on US 20 / US 93, until it met up with US 26 again. I took 26 south to I-84, which I then took east and south into Utah, where it met up with I-15. I drove south on I-15 until I got to Salt Lake City (N 40 46.215', W 112 00.190', elev. 4239 ft.), where I stopped for the night. My first impression of Utah was that it is a weird state. Their alcohol laws are a bit different from most other states, partly because of the fact that 73% of the population are Latter Day Saints (Mormons). I stopped at a restaurant, and usually if I dine by myself, I like to sit at the bar. Well, that is hard to do in Utah. The "bar" I sat at was actually very thin, since there were no alcohol bottles, kegs, refrigerators, glasses or sinks behind the bar walls. There were 8 beer tap handles, but they were only for show, letting you know which beers were available. The beer taps were actually in the kitchen, and from what I understand, the maximum alcohol level for beer is 3%. Along the highways, there were many advertisements for things you'd probably only find in Utah; LDS magazines, billboards very much against divorce, and advertisements for ministries overseas. (I'm not sure what the requirements are, but I think most LDS young adults do missionary work outside of Utah). Utah is a weird state in that it is mostly desert and mountains, with a huge salt lake, with 10 times the salinity of the ocean. Seems like a very difficult place to live and farm.

I found myself thinking that Utah is almost like another country, its citizens, with different customs and different religions may as well be foreign. But I started to think about it some more, and I realized that the story of the Mormons is uniquely American. Not only do the Mormons have a place in American history and the founding of the west, but America was probably the only place in the world in the 1800s where you could found a new religion, survive many years of harsh religious persecution, go west seeking a promised paradise, and then actually build a paradise out of nothing, in the harsh desert and dead soil of the salt lake, just by the sheer will and determination of the followers. I just can't picture this happening in other countries. (It can't be denied that polygamy helped). I might get a little ridicule for this statement, but I find myself wanting to read the Book of Mormon, not so I can become a follower, but so I can get a better idea of the beliefs of these interesting, persevering people.

I woke up saturday morning, and drove south on I-15 until I reached US 6 in the town of Spanish Forks. I never did see the great Salt Lake. Whoops. I drove south and east on US 6 for about 2 hours until it met up with US 191, which I took south and east some more until I got to I-70. My good friend and former roommate and co-worker Keith was flying into Gunnison, Colorado for a week's vacation with his sister who lives near Gunnison, and his dad, who was also flying in, and I was going to meet up with them on saturday night. About 10 minutes before I would get to the town of Grand Junction, CO, where I would turn south to head to Gunnison, I got a call from Keith, telling me there were problems with his flight from New Jersey, and because of the delay, he would miss his connection flight to Gunnison and wouldn't get there until sunday. I suggested I could pick him up in Denver and he could skip his connecting flight and we could drive to Gunnison and have a traditional Jon and Keith adventure. He thought for a minute and decided this was definitely what he wanted to do, so I diverted my course, and continued east on I-70 until I got to Denver. When I got to Denver, about 8PM, it was very dark. I found that the airport is a good 15 miles from the city. The only way to reach it is from a single road off the interstate, where you travel 10 miles through empty fields of nothing, and very few exits off this one road. I heard somewhere that the Denver airport has more land than all of the city of Boston, and driving out to the airport, I could see why. All I could see were empty fields and airport lights. I'm not sure why the place is so big or even how they acquired all that land in the first place, since it looked like it maybe could be farm land. I parked at short term parking and entered the terminal building. The airport design seems pretty awful to me, especially for a modern airport. The security looked awful in the sense thatr it would be nightmarish for travellers to pass through, and everything seemed so disorganized. I also remember watching a television show on the history channel once that was discussing modern engineering disasters, and the Denver airport was one of them. From what I remember it was a full 6 years after construction that the airport actually opened full time; it took that long to work out all the bugs in the systems. Anyway, that is where I now sit, waiting for Keith to arrive.

Post script: I think we may have a guest columnist / photographer for the next entry. That is, if you can behave yourself, and if I can work out the contract details with the guest.