Day 2&3 - Park City, UT to Sanatoga, PA

The reason day 2 and day 3 are together is basically because I drove straight through from Wednesday (10:30am Mountain time /  12:30pm Eastern time) until I got home Friday morning at 7:30am. I did take a couple of naps along the way. Forty-five minutes here, two hours there. I didn't think it was worth paying for a motel/hotel to be there for 6 hours. Plus I have become somewhat of a hotel snob. I don't do the discount or hole in the wall chains anymore. I learned that rather quickly at work. Sometimes it is worth paying a couple extra bucks to stay somewhere and not worry about the riff-raff.

Awake at 10:30am Mountain time/12:30pm Eastern time

When I traveled for work in my old job I normally put photos of the hotel I stayed at and the car I drove. So here it is.

Park City, Utah was the host city for the 2002 Winter Olympics. As you may or may not know, when an Olympics are held the games take place over a large geographic region so only a few events took place in Park City. There is an Olympic Park where the bobsled and ski jump took place. I have to say, ski jumping is the craziest damn thing I think I have ever seen in my life. I can't ski the little kid hill, and these guys get up on top of a ramp and fly for 100 feet or however long it is. Then they put the ski jump on top of a hill in which you can literally see for miles. I saw the bobsled track, you can go for rides but only on the weekends. I am sensing a weekend trip to Lake Placid, NY. Any one up for it?

Park City has a nice downtown. Looks like your typical old west town that has been re-done. Very touristy, I just drove through didn't really get out and open the wallet. I wanted to get moving, I knew I had a long day ahead of me.

Now I set out for the land of Wyoming and Nebraska. I hadn't located anything which I was interested in stopping and seeing in either state. So if something presented itself in sight or tourist trap blue highway signage I would check it out. I stopped in Evanston, WY to get a meal Wednesday and found a Sonic drive-in. I asked my kids what they wanted before I left, my son indicated he wanted maps. Maps are usually available at those welcome centers on the interstate right when you enter a state. Wyoming's welcome center was on the edge of a state park that had buffalo and elk in it. I saw a large crane along the road, the thing was literally the size of a house. A big house at that. Look closely you will see a catwalk on top of it. I saw a lot of trains on this trip. Union Pacific has a lot of rail that runs along side I-80. I stopped in Laramie, WY to get gas at the Kum and Go. Interesting name for sure. I also made my way to yet another Harley Davidson shop, Maverick Motorsports. (On a side note, if you want to go somewhere and get away from your cell phone I suggest Wyoming and Nebraska. I had no coverage in either state.)

I did have one request from my neighbor Scott to visit the largest ball of twine. I didn't see any signs for the ball of twine, but I did pass through Omaha, NE which is the home to the largest ball of stamps. It was sometime in the overnight so I don't think it was open to the public. I did see Rosenblatt Stadium which hosts the College World Series annually, only briefly as I passed it at 75mph. The roads out west are great. They are roomy and with the raised speed limits you can make good time. I must say it was easier to stay awake at 75 than at 55. 55 feels like you are sleeping. If you are wondering why I took a picture of the rest stop, it was a truly moving experience ;-). I stopped at a Flying J truck stop to get drinks and found a DART bus in the parking lot. It had temporary tags from out west, I am assuming it was being driven east to be delivered to the Delaware transit service. Oh by the way, add another state capital to the list, Lincoln, NE.

If there was anywhere in the country I never expected to visit, Iowa was on the top of the list. Iowa is the home to the Field of Dreams movie site. It really does look like what you saw in the movie. I have made a separate page with the pictures from there. I also was going to go through Davenport, IA which is my mother in law grew up. So I figured it would be cute to get her granddaughter a short from the Harley shop. Of yeah, I got to add yet another shirt to my collection, Wiebler's Quad Cities Harley Davidson.

The last place I stopped and actually took photos was in Illinois. I stopped at the welcome center for some maps and found the viewing point of the I-80 bridge and the Mississippi River. Nice view! Illinois is the home of the Blues Brothers. The original Blues brothers (Belushi and Akroid), not the bogus John Goodman Blues Brothers. I visited the Conrad's Harley Davidson in Joliet, IL. Hey look who is on the back of the shirts.

Illinois would be the last place to ride the roads for free. Once I hit the corruption filled city of Chicago, I began paying tolls. Only 60 cents to sit on their crappy roads and not move. Needless to say I am not a fan of Chicago's toll way system.

I didn't do any photos in Indiana, Ohio, or Pennsylvania because it was dark and I was almost home. I napped at the Commodore Perry service plaza at mile marker 100 on the Ohio Turnpike for about an hour. I also napped along the PA Turnpike a couple times. Scares the heck out of you when an 18 wheeler goes by and hits the SNAP strips while you are trying to sleep.

I arrived back in Sanatoga at 7:30am Friday. Ending mileage 3229 miles, the trip odometer reset every one thousand miles. I averaged 27.1 miles per gallon, my average speed was 60 miles an hour and I went through 6 state capitals (Sacramento, Carson City, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, Lincoln and Des Moines)