Driving Back East -- Part I

Tuesday I left San Francisco. I wanted to spend a day at lake Tahoe, but the tooth story had cost me one day, so I had to drive straight through to Salt Lake City in one go. All the people in San Fran have been so nice, just as everybody I met during my trip has been super nice ! I consider myself very lucky that I have the opportunity to do all this and that I could make so many new friends!!!
Right now I am in Colorado Springs and I just had a great weekend with the sangha here, we went up to see the land that is going to be the North American Diamondway Buddhist Retreat Center. My tooth keeps on bugging me, I have a headache all the time and my jaw and face feels very funny. I have painkillers to make it easier, but you also get very sleepy and overall that´s not a condition I want to spend the rest of my trip with. So tomorrow morning I got another dentist appointment and hopefully he will have the time to treat me tomorrow. I am not looking forward to get a root canal at all, but if that´s going to make my trip better, please drill some! ;)
But first check out what has happend on the 3 days on the road to Colorado springs! I had an awesome time nevertheless all the tooth worries:

the mountains in California! You have to cross them on your way east and they are very beautiful... I heard lake Tahoe would be really amazing, and I think that lake right here can give you an idea of the landscape up there

after you pass Rhino you enter the desert again, with mountains to your right and left. I had almost forgotten how great that feeling is driving with an amazing view like that. It certainly felt super good to be on the road again and experience such a wide open landscape... wow!

Good music in your car, no thoughts in your head and you could just go forever!

I stopped at this place to get some gas. Do you see the nice grassy hills there?

and as the sun was setting I still had about 250 miles to drive to Salt Lake City. The sunset was nice! And just before Salt Lake City, you cross the salt lake on a kind of dam and man, the lake smells pretty strong, hehe! I couldn´t see a thing but you´ll certainly know when you get to the lake :)
In Salt Lake City Diana picked me up at a gas station close to her house. We stayed up pretty late and had some booze and talked about a lot of stuff. It was so nice! She would show me around the next day and we did some cool stuff together...

But first she had to go to work and until she was back I took a drive up to the mountains. They pretty much start right at the edge of the city

so within 20 minutes you are in the mountains!

and up there it´s fantastic. Another world right in front of your door!

look at this! wonderful! Then I drove down the other side and this was actually not so nice. Ski slopes all over, ski huts, hotels and apres ski bars. Not much forest left there and they were still building new stuff all over the place. Basically a pretty much destroyed landscape. But you know, that´s the way to get the dollars out of the mountains, right? I am sure skiing and snowboarding is fun but I feel more that just a little irritated when I see something like that...

later the day Diana took me on a tour downtown Salt Lake City

Mormones used to be the biggest part of the population. That´s their main temple downtown. I didn´t knew much about their religion at first. It turned out that the man have usually 8 wifes. One main one and 7 others. Not to bad, my first thought ;)
But then Diana told me some more and it´s actually a pretty funny religion, some twisted side branch of christianity, with lots of strange dogmas and beliefs. Somehow they are the chosen one´s if I got that right. ahhhh... ok, whatever! ;)

we climbed up a hill to watch the sunset from there. Pretty adventurous climbing by the way! We could overlook the whole valley. That´s Salt Lakes captiol!

and when it gets dark the whole valley lights up... It looks just like a sea of lights...
but we had to find our way down there and couldn´t wait until complete darkness

we went to shoot some pool and had some drinks afterwards!

next morning I was on the road again, this time towards Colorado Springs! I had to drive through the mountains on interesting an curvy roads

around Price there are those cool rocks. I think Price Canyon is pretty famous, I wonder if that is what I came through. Looked fantastic for sure!

and again, open plains and mountains to the side, cant´t get enough of that!

I knew I was short on time because I had still 6 hours to go to Colorado Springs and it was already early afternoon. But Arches National park was on my way and I had to go and see it. And it turned out to be so fantastic that this is defnetly a place where I have to come back to with more time. But another adventure would await me here which I hadn´t expected at all !!!

that´s in Arches National Park. Amazing rock formations...

and just as I was driving there for maybe 20 minutes, the engine on my Ford started acting funny... First I noticed some uneven running and soft noises when I slowed down. It got worse and it wouldn´t accelerate so good any more. hmmm....

this is the Delicate Arch! It´s pretty huge!!! I only saw it from far away, I was worried about the car and running out of time. Shortly after that the yellow engine sign on the dashboard lit up. Aha, I thought. Real trouble! I looked it up in the manual and it said it´s most likely that the engine is missfiring and you should get service immediately. Sure, I only was out in the desert, there´s plenty of car service around here! Hehe. But I could still drive and actually I could take TURTLE on its last offroad desert trip...

another arch on my way out. So impressive! I have to come back for sure. The best would be a bike trip in fall or autumn when it´s not to hot. Combined with camping and hiking. Should be pretty awesome. Anybody interested?

and my TOM TOM was leading me out of the park on this dust road which had a lot of turns, bumps and loose sand. A feast for any daring 4wheel driver!!! You can do funny hops and slides and you can pick up quite some speed on the straight parts. It would be Ford TRUTLEs last adventure, at least with me behind the wheel

more crazy rocks on my way out

the dust road dropped me off pretty close to the highway and I had about 80 miles to go to Grand Junction/Colorado. The engine was running more and more unsteady. I looked up the closest AVIS dealer with my TOM TOM and could find one at the local airport. PHEW !!!!!!!
I already had prepared myself be stuck out on the highway. I just could make it there, and as I had to restart the engine to park the car at the AVIS lot, it was running super funny. No way I could have driven much more. I don´t think it´s a big deal, most likely just dirty spark plugs. But I didn´t have any tools for that anyway...
I was surprised how easy it was to exchange the car at the AVIS office for another one. They didn´t even look at it... Lucky me !!! ;)

But here we go: I left my Ford Escape behind that drove me 8000 miles in the last 7 weeks. And I asked for the smallest car they had, which was a funky grey Ford Focus! Its right next to TURTLE in the picture above...

bye bye Turtle!

and hello cutie! I think I´ll call this one SPEEDY ;)

on the road again in Colorado

SPEEDY is doing an awesome job and I just love her fuel efficiency!
(see, the TURTLE was a big 4wheel drive guy. SPEEDY is a nice little lady, hehe)

At 11.30 pm I arrived in Colorado springs. More from here soon! I have to go to bed now, for tomorrow I will have my first ever root canal. Yeeeahhhh! (think positive think positive) Let´s hope the dentist can treat me tomorrow, he wants to check on the situation first. I say let´s drill buddy!