Salt Lake City ’ s a flat place , right ?
The road starts to meander and climb through a mountain pass of all things ! This I ’ m sure would be beautiful on a sunny day . These are the Wasatch Mountains . The dark landscape is changing to strange barren cut out mountains with anonymous mining quarries . A railway line appears alongside the road , with long , long freight trains transporting mysterious goods back and forth . This place resembles something out of a James Bond film , with people mining for unknown things on another planet .
I can see no end to this unrelenting , horrendous deluge . The rain is battering my helmet visor , and I ’ m having to dangerously take a hand off to continuously wipe the dirt and rain away . It ’ s only getting worse , if that ’ s at all possible !
There ’ s just no use continuing . After about 100 miles , I arrive into Price and pull into Smiths Fuel and Food Hypermarket . I ’ ll walk up and down the aisles if I have to , to take some respite from the cold weather outside and to avoid the four-letter word ; Rain . I ’ ll also use their restrooms to wash the grime off my face and warm my poor , frozen hands .
Walking back outside , I drive over to fill up . I ’ m drawn into a conversation as has often been the case across America , by a driver filling up next to me . This morning , it ’ s an older lady almost being blown away by the wind and with her grandchildren .
I smile at what she says , “ Hey Ma ’ am . Can you believe this weather ? It ’ s recently been drier than a popcorn fart over here !”
I can ’ t help but let out a chuckle as she continues “ We ’ ve seen no rain in 38 days . The clouds just always went past us . All my pepper plants are dried out . Yes , Ma ’ am this is what we ’ ve all been waiting for . Let ’ s hope it lasts long enough to soak into the soil .”
The children in the car shout they ’ re going to be late and she hurriedly excuses herself and drives off . At least there ’ s one person happy with the weather today .
I take another deep breath and fire the engine up again . Before long I ’ m entering the town with the curious name of Helper in Carbon County . As in most places , when the railroad opened up the area here in the 1880 ’ s things were discovered . This time it was coal .
At the moment , I ’ m also getting worried on where I ’ ll end up tonight . I continue climbing relentlessly until I reach a landscape that has changed to misty green hills , and I feel it ’ s somewhere very high up , but I can ’ t see much more than 30 feet ( 10 metres ) in front of me and the clouds are literally down to the level of me and the bike . I see a remote gas station and pull up .
I ’ ve arrived at Soldier Summit Station more than 6,000 feet ( 2,000 metres ) in altitude . I ’ m freezing and shaking with cold . I walk into
TRAVERSE 34