The early morning shuttle flight from Redding, CA to San Francisco went off without a hitch, and even though my connecting flight to Las Vegas naturally left from the opposite side of the airport I made it in plenty of time (i.e. 10 minutes). After an uneventful crossing of the Sierra (a bit of turbulence here last year wreaked havoc with my in-flight beverage) I was deposited in the bowels of McCarran International Airport, where I could almost feel my body being penetrated with thousands of doses of radiation from the cellphone-toting hordes.
Arriving at the rental car pickup at 10:30 am, I crammed myself into an extremely new Dodge Stratus (781 miles on the odometer) and, after spending several minutes trying to figure out how to adjust things so that if my legs were comfortably extended toward the pedals I would still be in sight of the steering wheel, I roared away toward I-15, through the unreal world that surrounds the Strip. After driving a stick shift truck for years, I inadvertently surprised various drivers behind me when, after accelerating up an onramp into the 75 mph traffic on the freeway, I would mistakenly stomp on the brake pedal (thinking it was the clutch) in a futile attempt to "shift gears". This little tactic must have earned me the respect and admiration of my fellow drivers, since many of them, while zooming past me, honked their horns in appreciation and appeared to give me a hand signal that could only have meant "You Numbah One!"
After an hour or so of average desert scenery northbound on I-15, punctuated only briefly by the intrigingly-named Virgin River Gorge, my first stop was to be Oasis Discount Liquors (see photo at left) in Mesquite, NV - the last outpost of "civilization" (and real beer) before venturing into Mormon Land. The first three items of the "10 Essentials", so well-known to Adventurers on every continent, were procured here - a styrofoam ice chest, two bags of crushed ice and 3 six-packs of Guinness Extra Stout, along with sundry other condiments. Heading north again, and losing an hour switching to Mountain Time, I passed St. George and turned off the freeway toward Hurricane, UT. Wishing to avoid the $20 fee for driving through Zion National Park (which I saw last year) I headed southeast toward Freedonia, AZ.
This stretch of highway began to develop "scenery", but it had rained recently and any dirt roads I passed leading out "in the middle of nowhere" were too muddy for my rental car, so I sped on toward Freedonia. Arriving there in the late afternoon and musing to myself that it would be a good location for filming a documentary about the history of trailer trash and/or abandoned vehicles, I turned north and crossed over into Utah, settling down for the night in Kanab at the extremely comfortable and inexpensive Parry Lodge. After dropping off a pile of my junk in the motel room I drove north on Highway 89 and poked around Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, where the sand, though not really a true "pink" because of the rain, had a very peculiar color and was as fine as flour. Watching the sunset from here was very cool, and the silence was "deafening". Tomorrow I hoped to explore the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (see photo above) but right now I needed some sleep.
...to Day 2 - Thursday