Days 1 and 2: Desert and then some.

Start: Danville, CA; End: Salt Lake City, UT

It's hard to imagine that we've made it all the way to Wyoming already. So much to do and see in this country! I wish I had pictures to upload, but I'm not on my laptop yet, stay tuned.

We spent our first night at the beautiful Pate cabin in Tahoe where we roasted weenies and marshies for dinner then rode bikes to the lake (not Tahoe) and relaxed on the dock with our feet in the refreshing mountain water. It was simply paradise, and a wonderful way to start the road trip.

During the beginning of the drive the next day, we talked about how eerie it is that everything up near Lake Tahoe is named after the Donner party, but seriously, what a memorial. Looking at the mountains, though, you can't help but to think about how inexperienced and foolish those people must have been to attempt to cross them. A couple of hours of driving through Nevada desert later, we had our explanation. I could hardly bear to drive a few hours through there, how long must it have taken pioneers to cross that desolate land? Needless to say, it was hot and boring.

I'm still astonished at the stark contrast between states. It seems as soon as you cross one state line into another, the environment changes drastically. From California to Nevada, it was marked by a complete absence of trees. It's not that the tree line changed, it disappeared entirely. Similarly, crossing from Nevada into Utah, we were stunned by what we saw: a vast expanse of shimmery, gray ground. As I drove a neck-breaking 75 miles per hour, Jen would lean out the passenger-side window trying to capture the stark white landscape and sometimes shallow, shallow water.

Finally, I spotted a rest area where we would not only be able to take photos from a stand-still, but also walk on that otherworldly surface. It turns out we had been driving straight through the Bonneville Salt Flats. This is where they do all kinds of really fast land races because the ground is perfectly flat. In fact, it's so perfectly flat that drivers cannot see the end of the course from the start because of the curvature of the Earth. As we looked off into the distance, we could not even see where the mountains met the ground and they seemed to be floating in the air like giant rock icebergs. The flatness also messes with your perspective and sense of distance, making things seem much closer than they really are.

We spent the night in Salt Lake City, where we had an amazing birthday dinner of mole and tres leches cake at the Red Iguana.