mmegaera | My first WorldCon, etc., #8 and last

The next morning, I dropped M off at the Denver airport, and headed west on I-70 towards home. Again, I’ve been over the Front Range of the Rockies on I-70, although the last time was in 1975, and I was a passenger. It’s an entirely different experience when one is driving. Up over 11,000 feet, steep grades, winding turns, semis around every corner. I hadn’t realized that the Eisenhower Tunnel over the Continental Divide had only been a year old the first time I’d ridden through it in 1974. After the tunnel seven percent downgrades were common, down past Vail and Copper Mountain and Breckenridge ski areas to the redrock country of western Colorado. I tried, unsuccessfully, to find lunch in Glenwood Springs. I stopped at a fruit stand in the orchard country just east of Grand Junction and bought pears. I got gas in Fruita, Colorado, and drove on across into Utah, arriving in what I thought was that night’s destination of Green River at only four in the afternoon, so I kept going, turning northwest on US 6, which cuts off the point of a triangle, another 60 miles to Price, Utah, where I spent the night.

The next morning I headed further along US 6 to just south of Salt Lake City, where I picked up I-15 north into Idaho. Unfortunately, I caught both the tail end of rush hour and a lot of construction traffic in SLC, but I got through it relatively unscathed. I-15 between the northern edge of the SLC conurbation and the Idaho border is some of the most desolate high desert I’ve driven across in a long time. But not long after I merged from I-15 to I-84 westbound in southern Idaho, what should appear like a mirage right at lunchtime but a Carl’s Jr. [g]. After refueling, I headed west across Idaho, reaching Boise, my putative goal for the night, about the middle of the afternoon. So I kept going. I crossed the Oregon border (and went back to Pacific time) an hour later, and decided I could make it to Baker City, Oregon, 60 miles further on. So I did, arriving there tired but satisfied that I had less than 400 miles to go to get home.

The last day was familiar ground. Up I-84 into Washington to I-90 just past Yakima where you can see the “back side” of Mt. Rainier from the freeway, over Snoqualmie Pass, down SR 18, SR 167, and SR 512 home.

And when I got here the cats were still alive and well, the house hadn’t burned down, and my garden hadn’t dried up and blown away (all of which I’d had nightmares about the last two nights on the road, worse than I’d ever had before – I nightmared at least twice that the catsitter hadn’t shown up at all and that the cats had died of starvation). Now I’m home, unable to sit without being sat on, and actually, I think I’m glad.

It was a wonderful trip while it lasted, though.