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three more states, 10/10-10/12
Dec. 6th, 2003 07:23 pmWyoming, Utah, and Nevada--the last three states before I got home--couldn't be more different, and yet they seemed to blur together. Maybe because I was racing to get through them. (Although, after my encounter with the Nebraska State Patrol, I was racing through only as fast as the posted speed limits would allow.)
Wyoming was physically stunning--far more beautiful than any of my photographs suggest--but the first town I went through was Laramie, and I only know one thing about Laramie, so the whole way through the state, even while I was awestruck by the scenery and appreciative of the hospitality, in the back of my mind I was thinking of Matthew Shepard.
A couple of days later, in Nevada, I heard a radio interview with Marcus Zill, a Lutheran pastor in Laramie, about how Shepard's murder--"the jury's still out" on whether he was killed because he was gay--helped campus radicals spread the homosexual agenda.
I passed through Utah too fast to see much. Salt Lake City had six-lane one-way streets with utterly prosaic names ("400 So.") and no traffic to justify them.
The rest of Utah was red mountains, salt flats, and churches.
Nevada was sandy mountains, broad deserts, and casinos.
My favorite spot in these last two states was Wendover. Wendover is actually two cities--Wendover, UT, and West Wendover, NV--nominally separated by a state border. You start seeing billboards as far away as Salt Lake City advertising West Wendover's casinos, gentlemen's clubs, and adult bookstores. As you approach the state line, you see the "Wendover: Too much excitement for just one state!" billboard. You pass through Wendover, a small Utah town with no particularly striking features, and then, right on top of the state line, you see your first casino, and you're in West Wendover: Where Utah goes to sin.
Wyoming was physically stunning--far more beautiful than any of my photographs suggest--but the first town I went through was Laramie, and I only know one thing about Laramie, so the whole way through the state, even while I was awestruck by the scenery and appreciative of the hospitality, in the back of my mind I was thinking of Matthew Shepard.
A couple of days later, in Nevada, I heard a radio interview with Marcus Zill, a Lutheran pastor in Laramie, about how Shepard's murder--"the jury's still out" on whether he was killed because he was gay--helped campus radicals spread the homosexual agenda.
I passed through Utah too fast to see much. Salt Lake City had six-lane one-way streets with utterly prosaic names ("400 So.") and no traffic to justify them.
The rest of Utah was red mountains, salt flats, and churches.
Nevada was sandy mountains, broad deserts, and casinos.
My favorite spot in these last two states was Wendover. Wendover is actually two cities--Wendover, UT, and West Wendover, NV--nominally separated by a state border. You start seeing billboards as far away as Salt Lake City advertising West Wendover's casinos, gentlemen's clubs, and adult bookstores. As you approach the state line, you see the "Wendover: Too much excitement for just one state!" billboard. You pass through Wendover, a small Utah town with no particularly striking features, and then, right on top of the state line, you see your first casino, and you're in West Wendover: Where Utah goes to sin.
