After a peaceful night in Las Vegas, James and I loaded the car,  got onto I-15 and headed for Salt Lake City.

A hearty breakfast at the cafe right next to the Motel 6. How convenient is that?

On I-15, heading northeast out of Vegas–it isn’t the most exciting terrain in the world–yet.

Entering Utah, rhe mountains start and snow appears in the distance.

I thought we would be climbing that mountain I saw in the distance, but instead the road went down.

With one canyon behind us, even more snow appears in the distance. It may seem commonplace to most of you, but snow is a big deal to me. I just don’t ever get any in Phoenix.

Mountains are never out of sight in Utah.

. . . and they just keep getting bigger.

Coming into St. George.

Snow on the ground just outside the car–not on distant mountains but all around us now!

It’s a road trip. You’re going to see lots of pictures of the road. I love this part. Just sailing along through unfamiliar territory, watching the landscape unfold in front of me.

Stretching my legs. Larry did not get my business–I didn’t see his place in time. I guess location really is everything.

Salt Lake City, here we come, but first we have to get past Mona.

Woo hoo! We have arrived at Henry’s house, only getting lost in the suburbs once. This hardworking Entish mailbox is the work of my niece Angela St. Andre, and is the coolest mailbox post in the state of Utah, imho.

A bear welcomes us to Henry’s front door.

Gail St. Andre welcomes us to her home. The fact that we could stay with family really made the trip worth while . . . and saved money on hotel bills.

Eep! The bear is friendly, but I don’t know about the giant spider.

Henry St. Andre, the youngest of my 3 brothers, shows off an elk-skin cap that he made for himself. The spirit of the American frontier is still alive in this household.

Henry is a farmboy at heart. He keeps turkeys in his huge back yard, and chickens, and two cats.

We arrived on Monday night. On Tuesday, Henry took James and me to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake.  This is just the freeway heading into the city proper.

Henry and James are posing with a patriotic and very colorful buffalo on the island. You can see part of the Great Salt Lake behind them.

We climbed a very steep hill to get a better view, carefully stepping over the trail markers left behind by the real buffalo on the island.

Another view of the lake.  The brown stuff in the foreground is a kind of scummy algae that grows in the briny water.  There are no fish in this lake–it’s too salty, but there are brine shrimp, also known as sea monkeys, and sea gulls nest in the area.

I am looking down an almost sheer cliff at the lake below. This is the kind of trail where one wrong step means serious injury or death. I was careful.

And here’s a picture of me on the island. Ya think I should make it a profile pic?

I am standing about 30 yards from a real live American bison. I know it’s just a big cow, but it is a wild animal. He was busy eating, and I didn’t do anything to disturb him. James and Henry stayed inside the truck, but I’m fearless. 🙂

After leaving the island, I had Henry take me further north to Ogden, Utah. This is the town where I was actually born, and I haven’t been here since I was a baby–totally don’t remember it, and would claim I’ve never seen it before. It was a mixture of old and new, and I kind of liked the looks of it.

This is the only shot I got of the skyline of Salt Lake City.

And this is my niece, Angela St. Andre. She is a talented artist and metal sculptress. Here she is holding a small metal armadillo that I commissioned her to make for my friend Steve Crompton and his wife. They collect armadillos, and it seemed a great chance to get them a one-of-a-kind original.

And with that, my camera memory was full.  I couldn’t take any more pictures. So you don’t get to see the very friendly cat that followed me around and jumped into my lap every chance it got.  You don’t get to see me teaching some of Angela’s friends how to play Tunnels and Trolls.  You don’t get to see my very handsome nephew Nathan who does nature walk blogs of his own.  You don’t get to see any of the drive back to Arizona, including the ruggedly beautiful terrain around Page and the Glen Canyon Dam.  I could have easily taken another 50 photos on this trip, but the camera filled up, and I had to stop.  Lucky you!

The trip back to Phoenix took two days, but I got home in time to join the Fellowship of the Troll for supper at the Talking Stick Resort east of Scottsdale.  I saw a chunk of the Navajo reservation I’ve never seen before since Highway 89 between Page and Harper’s Ferry at the Vermillion Cliffs was destroyed by a landslide last month and may take years to repair.

The only thing that really went wrong for me on the trip was that I accidentally left behind the fantasy paperback I was reading at Henry’s house.  I hope Angela or Nathan or Henry discovers it and gets a good read out of it.

If you have pictures of scenic Page, Arizona, or have visited the Great Salt Lake, or seen the dinosaur tracks in the stone outside of Yoba City, why not leave a comment?  The road trip is over, but perhaps I’ll do it again some day.

–end