Good Old-Fashioned Driving Vacation: Day 3

The trek West continues. After some initial confusion about which direction was actually west, we were back on the highway continuing our journey.

Utah has really wowed us with its incredible rock formations. We had a few hours driving through them today, in which we philosophized much about what it would have been like for the early explorers and settlers. Glad it wasn’t me. Although our own exploring today did take us off the beaten path. We were headed for two ghost towns!

The first one, Frisco, was an old silver mining town from the late 1800s. Getting to old Frisco was 45 miles off the interstate, to a place not even on the map. Cool. Back in the day, it was a real Wild West town, with 6000 people, 20+ saloons, and murders & gun fights a daily occurrence, according the accounts we read (yes, over the PA system. Still loving it). Let me tell you what I’ve learned about actual ghost towns. They’re not like on the Brady Bunch. This one was more like scattered remnants, and the buildings left were in ruins. But we did find mining equipment, a large cemetery, and these cool “beehive kilns” where they would burn charcoal to go in the silver smelter. Frisco was abandoned in 1920 when the mining was no longer successful.

I didn't learn any of these things from plaques at the town. There are none. Thank you Internet.

The other ghost town we visited, Grafton, has several buildings that have been preserved. It was abandoned apparently for two reasons – flooding, and its inhabitants were afraid of getting killed by Indians. (I know, Native Americans, but one of the gravestones said “Killed by Indians,” so I’m going for authenticity here.)

I think, all in all, we were a little disappointed in our ghost towns. One of them was too much in ruins, and the other one was, you know, preserved, taking away from its authenticity. There's no pleasing us. I blame Hollywood.

Grafton was very close to Zion National Park, so we popped in for a visit. By this time the boys were kinda done with breathtakingly spectacular colored rocks, and massive, unbelievable sheer cliffs, so we paid our admission, said hello, and stopped in the visitor center to get a stamp in my parks passport. Damn straight.

I liked Utah. The only thing I regret not seeing was a tumbleweed blowing across the road in one of the ghost towns. That would have been nice. We did see a cattle drive, but the cattle seemed to be following the cowboy rather than being pushed by him, so that was weird.

We picked up two geocaches today, one in a cemetery in the little corner of Arizona we cut through. Trevor pointed out that this is the 4^th cemetery we’ve visited on our trip. So that’s weird too.

Hoover Dam -- yeah, we skipped that. #wearingdown

A word about our road-trip music. I'm normally a channel-hopper, but Spectrum XM has been our best friend these past few days… Dave Matthews Band, Avett Brothers, Beatles, Traveling Wilburys, Van Morrison… it’s been perfection. We’ve stayed with it the entire time, except for interludes of Matt Hires’s “State Lines,” played at the appropriate milestones. Love that song.

We made it to Vegas (elevation 2100 ft) and checked in at one of my favorite hotels anywhere, Aria. There could not be a more stark contrast between this and our lodging at the Robbers Roost the night before. Trevor and Nate greatly prefer the luxury and high-tech gadgets of Aria. Nate could have stayed in the room all evening, controlling everything in the room from his bedside touchpad, but we did the obligatory walk down the Strip, with all of its own weirdness. The Bellagio dancing fountains are good every time. The show we saw was choreographed to "Billie Jean," and the best one I've ever seen.

But, 99 degrees at 10pm?? Really, Vegas??

OK, that's more than enough about Saturday. On to California Sunday!

Miles driven today: 550. Total: 1690.

Utah