on the road again

Leaving the mile-high city of Denver we soon enter back into the state of Wyoming. The American interstate system is good for just ploughing ahead but don't plan on seeing a great deal. Dull is the best word to describe most outlooks from the interstate but at least it's direct.

The yellow grass plains of Wyoming start displaying signs of snow and the more west we head the more the snow appears. By the time we reach the small town of Rawlins it's freezing and ice surrounds the crummy motel we stop in. Rawlins is one of those American towns that is terminally ugly and unfathomably expensive. Why in this dead end backwater are all the motels soo pricey I can't comprehend. After entering the petrol station to the sound of the black toothed cashier swearing her head off, then her total lack of being able to understand a word I was saying, I was glad to get out of the place. In many places, more often in small towns, people seem to have no clue what the hell I'm saying to them. Tuna isn't that far away from the American pronunciation 'Toona' but still this baffles hordes of backwards born hicks. My refusal to repeat it the American way sometimes drags things out but I feel it must be done. This is probably caused in part by the lack of worldly knowledge they have. Any programme on TV featuring foriegners, even English, speaking English has subtitles along the bottom. This kind of forced laziness is farcically annoying at times when I have to prepay for petrol by announcing I want, '40 dollars on pump 5 please' and getting responses like, '15 dollars on what ya say?'. I'm surprised I haven't bitten my tongue clean off by now but I'm at the whim of these morons as I need what they're selling.


We leave miserable Rawlins behind on a snow covered highway on which the wind is throwing snow around like a white sea. Further on heavy road salting leaves the road looking not dissimilar to a scene from 'The Fog' with it's rising swirls of steam.
We spend the night in another 'anywhere America' town named Pocatello. It's much better than Rawlins at least but the sun from the late afternoon doesn't continue into the next day and we once again awake to heavy snow fall. We make a decision on the car's starter motor, if it doesn't start first time this morning then we're buying a new one. The reception clerk helps us push start it in the falling snow on our way to the car parts place.
Thankfully for us my mum had found a second hand starter motor on the internet a few days earlier. And where could we buy this vital part from? Pocatello handily enough. After we'd found the place and they'd returned from lunch the part was ours at a third of the price of a new one, excellent. Now all it needed was fitting. We decide to buy some tools but put off the fitting for a couple of days in the hope that the weather just gets a touch warmer and we can make in time before the Craters of the moon visitors centre closes.
We re-enter Idaho with a different view from two weeks previous. Last time we were here every single piece of ground was layered in thick snow. This time the pale grass is showing prominently through and the snow has receded. I begin to think that snowboarding may not even be an option but as we close in on the visitors centre we see the large cinder cone of weeks before still wearing a blanket of snow. Granted it's nowhere near as thick but it's good enough. We get to the visitors centre and gratefully retrieve the boots, in the exact same condition we left them, then quickly repeat our previous snowboarding attempts on the cone. It's easier to walk much higher on the cone this time but I didn't forget that the higher altitude make the trudge just that much harder. In places the snow has become packed ice which I duly test the strength of with my skull , knocking me into a daze for a few minutes. Maybe a helmet would be a good idea.
After a couple of hours of hard work we drive out of the barren middle-of-nowhere setting to the town we stopped in last time, Idaho Falls. This time we stay in a nicer motel, not that the last one was bad, with a Mormon Temple view and recover from the battering we'd inflicted on ourselves.
Right, the moment of truth. Firstly, will the newly purchased starter motor work? Secondly, will I be able to fit it myself. It gets of to an OK start on another chilly morning until failure to reach the last bolt means scouting around town for a shorter spanner. Of course we can't find one, not even the local tool shop sells many items smaller than my forearm. So I put the bolts back and head back south through Pocatello once again. Here I get what I need and attempt once again, swapping the starter motors, in the icy breeze of the middle of the day on a Walmart car park. Oh the joys of travelling. But when I turn the ignition key all is good with the world and we've just saved ourselves a bundle of cash.
Back on the interstate we drive south out of Idaho into Wyoming, briefly skirting Utah, to another pointless town, Evanston. This woefully grey town was briefly turned lighter when we arrive out our motel and get chatting to the friendly Indian owner. His vast travelling, along with being able to speak 7 languages, gives us reason to talk for some time and leads, more importantly in my view, to him offering to give us some of his wife's home cooked food that evening. All at my favourite price, nothing. He even delivers it to our room, brill! It's been a long while since we'd had decent Indian food so the pakoras he gave us were very appreciated.
The next morning brings the usual heavy snow fall and the true test of the new starter motor, it works like a charm. A good way to start the day. Another good start to the day is leaving Evanston, which offers almost nothing from memory. I do like Wyoming as a state but for it's natural beauty alone as it's towns are just plain awful.


Now with the boots reclaimed and some extra miles under our belts we can get back to where we left off in a state that seems to have a lot more good places than bad, Colorado.