Amanda: The Great Escape

August 26

I got out. I got out of Nebraska without it sucking all the life out of me. It took hours, but I made it to my favourite part of Nebraska, the Wyoming line. To complicate the drabness of the Nebraska terrain, the sky was overcast, so everything was shadowless and weary. The dogs were fed up with truck routine. I took them for a good walk at a military vehicle museum, but it was no cure.

When Wyoming hit, the sky opened up. Thunderstorm surrounded the edge of the vista in all directions and we travelled trough scattered showers that loaded the air with the scent of damp sage brush. The rock formations leapt out, announcing the end of Nebraska. Black cows dot the golden landscape. Milton Scott says they spray for Herefords in Alberta–not in Nebraska, they are the cattle of choice.

I have crossed the great divide. Everything on this side goes to the Pacific. All that ground I covered today, All those miles, drains to the gulf of Mexico through the determined Mississippi. Only four more hours left to go.

August 27

I cleared the great divide late at night and stopped for the night somewhere past Rawlins, Wyoming. It must have been an OK sleep, because it was not noteworthy. I should have hitched up my generator and made a coffee before taking on Route 80 west. Coffee holes are few and far between, as is any sort of sizable settlement. It was sixty miles or so before one popped up. A coffee emergency. Rain in this part of Wyoming is rare. All kinds of signs show it to be a desert but the rain came down as cats and dogs today–the sort of rain that could alarm a sensible person about flash floods. It rained hard, until the Utah line, when it let up. About three hours in the driving rain.

I went straight to Park City for supplies and turned south for Heber and Soldier Hollow

My fatigue was palpable. I went with Shauna to run Howell at the practise field–five minutes of left and right. I organized my camper, walked the dogs and booked a spa night at the Zermatt Resort. Meanwhile Ray and Amy Coapman joined me for drinks and Canadian music.

I had a clever masseuse, Tatum. A total restorative. If I had known when I ran the dogs over the next couple of days, I would have booked a second one, she was so good. I took the waters and fought the poisons of that drive, that merciless drive.