Cortez to Telluride to Arches to Salt Lake City to Elko...

So we decided that we couldn't just skim the Rockies, we had to go into them. We left Cortez early in the morning and wound our way up to Telluride. It was my favorite drive yet. I almost wept it was so beautiful, with high rocky crags above ponderosa pines and the Dolores River. Telluride, though a little too kitchy for our tastes, was located in one of the most amazing valleys I've ever seen. We got some breakfast and headed back down the mountain. Before long, after following the San Miguel River for a bit, we just couldn't resist taking a little break to go skinny dipping. The water was frigid but invigorating. Penny jumped in to come swimming with us, but the current was so strong that she was almost swept away. She was just paddling hard with a worried look on her face and we had to spin her towards shore so that she would swim back out of the river. We dunked ourselves in the icy water a few mores times and headed back downhill towards Utah. The rest of the day, memories of that swim would be the happy place in my head that I went to while driving hours and hours in 100 degree heat without air conditioning.

We drove west out of Colorado and into the deserts of Utah. We wound through Arches National Monument, which was stunning though the heat was absolutely vicious and we were drying out like jerky. From there we had a harrowing and emotionally tumultuous 2.5 hour drive through the eastern deserts of Utah. Penny was one unhappy camper and we were seriously worried about her well-being. It looked like the moon for hundreds of miles. Grey, bleak, empty. And extremely hot and dry. No plants, no towns, just strange little mounds and hills of grey gravel... forever. We were exhausted and creeped out so after 13 hours of driving we decided to skip the camping and headed to a motel on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. It was an incredible and dynamic day and we crashed hard.

We got a good night's rest and got right on the road again the next morning. We had gotten through the city and were flying through the Bonneville Salt Flats in the Great Salt Desert when our luck ran out again and one of our back tires exploded. Not popped, it wasn't a simple flat, that thing exploded in a dozen different places. So, after emptying everything out, putting on the spare, putting everything back in and backtracking 15 miles, we arrived at the auto shop only to find out that we needed not one but four new tires. One hour and hundreds of dollars later we were back on the road, hungry but in good spirits. It could have been much worse. We flew straight through the desert and into Elko Nevada where we are spending the night before heading on to Reno tomorrow.

Elko is home to a large Basque population, so we decided we should go to one of the many local Basque restaurants for dinner. We ordered one family style dinner, intending to share it. Little did we know that one order was going to be 12 huge bowls of food. Here is a list of what was covering every inch of our table:

1. Bread
2. Soup
3. Salad
4. Corn
5. Beans
6. Spaghetti
7. French fries
8. 2 large Lamb chops
   
9. 2 Beef Tongue filets
   
10. 2 Cod Fish filets
    
11. 2 pieces of stewed Chicken
12. 6 large Meatballs

And that was supposed to be for one person (they charged us extra for sharing it). They should have put a warning label on the menu. We barely ate 1/4 of the food that was brought out, and took home for Penny the meatballs and tongue. It was just unreasonable. The lamb was amazing but besides that the food was...eh...ok.

Elko is full of bars, casinos, drunk people, falling down people, guys with 2 black eyes, drunk ladies screaming "where the fuck is the ATM?!" etc. etc. It's interesting for sure, but I'm glad we are moving on tomorrow.

Tomorrow we head for Reno. More deserts. yay.