ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE PICTURES ARE MINE.
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SALT LAKE CITY
Woke up! Breakfast at home in Salt Lake City, where mom CSer made an awesome egg scramble (apparently the only thing she can really cook). God, I hate American breakfast, generally speaking! I just don’t ever wanna pay for that shit!
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Bright n early, up n Adam" -- hehe, she said Adam...]
So, I’ve been ridiculously fascinated by supermarkets since Sherry and I started exploring the shit out of them on our international vacations, and domestic supermarkets are not exempt from this. This particular morning was spent stopping at many a supermarket (the first of which Rose did not visit because she was busy being sick-feeling? Or cranky? I forget). I should also note that here is where I first purchased a puff-grained cereal (an Egyptian grain largely unchanged since it was first cultivated — or so I read) called KAMUT. It wasn’t my first time purchasing KAMUT, but it became an on-going love because it is quite the texturally-satisfying food. That and we kind of evolved the word “kamut” to mean a million and one things… but mostly… you can say “kamut” with different influxes in speech and it will represent your different moods. 
BEHOLD, THE KAMUT!!
(Seriously, though… the texture is amazing! Imagine rice puffs but with a texture more akin to a marshmallow; it kind of melts into your mouth with your spit!)
This one is Emigration Market, the second supermarket stop. It was like, the most amazing supermarket ever, and we stumbled upon it while taking a weird route to the freeway (had Rose gotten her pipe dream of visiting an In-N-Out — as the chain had recently extended its bounds to Utah — then we would have missed it… buuuuuut she decided not to go because it was slightly out of the way, and so we got here 
). [SIDE NOTE: I'm writing this in NYC's Lower East Side right now, at Jeanette's apartment. It is 4:45am. Man, there are the gnarliest sounds outside of here, always.]
It was a former local grocery store called Emigration Market which had been taken over by a larger chain called Harmon’s, but they kept much of the unique aspects of it intact (I guess).
And we were greeted by John, Chief Financial Officer, pictured below… who gave us a coupon for a free loaf of bread, which I voted we exchange for a white chocolate walnut bread which was FUCKING INCREDIBLE. They also allowed you to slice your bread in different widths (we went with a “10″, whatever that means) — and that was kind of the most incredible thing. Even more incredible, though, is that the store had JUST opened the previous day, so we were seeing it at the height of people being excited, super nice, and very, very busy! It was amazzzzzzzzing. That place is the jam. I would shop there all the time if it were in my town. It would be out all. No contest!!!!!!!!!! But yeah. John. He’s the jam and isn’t that portrait just the face of jolliness?!!! But seriously. I want a bread that I can slice to the #5 mark cause that’s just godamn incredible, bitches.
The salad bar at Emigration Market, which Rose was endlessly fascinated by because it had sushi. And who can blame her?
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BETWEEN SALT LAKE CITY AND DENVER, PASSING THROUGH WYOMING
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Approaching Wyoming on the way to Denver"]
As Rose was sleeping for the majority of Wyoming, she woke up to some boring parts of it and concluded that Wyoming is the most ugly state. I kept getting mad about this because Jackson Hole and Yellowstone are in Wyoming and I totally like the state. Plus we only saw the south end of it where nothing in particular is fucking going on, and it’s just stereotyping the poor state!!!!! I had to fight on Wyoming’s behalf many a time (which is probably inherently totally pointless because who needs to defend a state’s honor, really) before she started prefacing the story of, “Wyoming is really ugly,” with, “granted we only saw part the Southern part of it…” I WIN. (BUT NOT REALLY AT ALL.)
Perhaps the biggest bummer, for me, lied in this hilarious thing called Little America. There were signs for it like 100 miles out, and I had been driving like two hours, so I was desperately awaiting its arrival so that I could stop driving. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Finally it emerged…
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Arriving at the much anticipated little America"]
Little America was oh-so-American. It was really just a gross little place that served a highly-advertised 99-cent ice cream cone (of the not-really-ice-cream-but-weird-flavored-ice-variety akin to that of McDonald’s), hamburgers, and hot dogs, and sold just the worst little knick-knacks and trinkets that you would expect from any Montana or Wyoming tourist shop; I’m talking instant soup mixes, emblazoned spoons, shaped rocks, and everything your grandma that loves to hoard newspapers could ever want.
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Good ol merican lunch"]
The second building, though, was depressing in a wholly different way. Think a dimly-lit Midwest diner remnant lacking any of the pep and step that you would want in any diner; imagine a Shari’s but even more dimly lit, with the only patron — a husk of a man — sitting on a stool just barely alive enough to sip his coffee. A waitress who has lived long beyond her glory days mills about, wiping down counters that probably don’t need wiping, standing next to curiously saran-wrapped doughnuts that can’t possibly be fresh, displayed like artifacts under glass casings. And let’s not discount the equally worthless gift shop that was attached to it, with the combination of all of these things making even the most jaded of Americans a sudden patriot, because we’re not all this pathetic, godammit, Uncle Sam!
Little America was, I guess, named after some complex {?} some guy had established on Antarctica. I don’t know the whole story anymore, but it was something about how some dude had been freezing in the cold winter in Wyoming and it reminded him of being in Antarctica, and he decided he would come back and establish a hotel where people could be warm amidst such frozen Midwest tundras. I’m sure Little America was quite a glorious establishment in its time, but the glory hath since fadeddddddddd! Faded and given way to the most banal and messy gas station that we were afforded the un-luxury of seeing the entire trip.
I guess this stuffed penguin was some sort of artifact to commemorate the Antarctica connection.
Luckily, before we got into that building we had some fun with the statues outdoors… riding buffalos and chasing dinosaurs.
Rose mentioned something about this thing being a cow. To which I responded, “It’s a buffalo, dude.”
This is the Sinclair gas station dinosaur!!! LOVE HIM!
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Double teaming the Dino"]
Wyoming! And she calls this ugly! P’shaw!
At a gas station stop somewhere after Little America, there were a series of foothills and brush in the near distance that I really wanted to get all up in. Climbed it for a bit, and it was a bit reminiscent of the small hills at Capaddoccia — extremely tiered and very easy to climb. Same coloration of stone, too. I ambled through the brush as Rose stayed down near the gas station, and got pretty high — and would have climbed higher — but felt rude for making her wait. I would very much liked to have just chilled out there for a second, though, as it was the first time being able to get into nature for the road trip, and I just love to do a meditation atop a random unsuspecting rock formation… the last one I had done was in New Mexico, and it was ever a mystical time… but yeah, since I was alone and didn’t want to make her wait, I climbed to the top and barely got to soak it in before I came back down. Did see a TON of what I think were rabbit pellets, though. TONS! The brush was kinda high and I was slightly worried about snakes, but I think twas not the season for them anyway.
Some man was collecting horns in his backyard around where I climbed the foothills.
From sundown the previous night, in the park, Rose had gotten all of these mosquito bites… these are what happened after she scratched the shit out of them. For once, I got a couple and RESISTED from scratching the shit out of them!! And did not turn into potato arm/leg/face! I must say that I was quite proud of myself because resistance to scratching mosquito bites is not something I am very good at.
Before we got to Denver, Rose really was hungry and we stopped by a Mexican restaurant. I don’t remember what I ate, but I didn’t need it.
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "don't tell me what to do! If I want to choke to death I will!" -- yes, I did say that, as a sassy joke, though I don't know why anymore...]
[ROSE'S SUMMARY OF DAY THREE: "wilded out at a rad grocer & had quiche, lasagna & tortelini for breakfast.(yes I am half Italian). Wyommings interesting at the edges but otherwise has a likeness to the default windows 98 bkg. Drove past Denver, staying w some nice folks near the columbine shootings. Most surprisingly awesome goes to Utah, & the opposite title to Cheyenne. Can't wait for tomorrow, were taking the whole day off."]
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DENVER
Finally arrived in Denver, rather later than initially anticipated. We were slightly out of it and I got the house wrong, and we knocked on the neighbor’s door. Could hear some rustling behind the door, the TV blaring, and a woman’s voice yelling, “Bobbbb? There’s someone at the door.” We waited a moment of the door to open, and it never did, so we just backed away… meanwhile, Ed said that he had happened to come out, saw our car, thought to himself, “This has to be them!” but saw no one around so he went back into his house, hyper-confused. We later appeared and solved the mystery for him!
Anyway, Kathy and Ed had a really great guest room with a king-sized bed, all made up for us and ready to go. We unfortunately got there way later than initially intending to, which was maybe inconvenient for them. Kathy had just gotten back from a month-long stint working at an army base in a nearby town (she is a military psychological counselor) and was super exhausted. It’s interesting — she basically takes people’s profiles in half-hour increments. But how much can you really get to know someone in half an hour? She said a lot of soldiers are just basically like, “I’m fine, ma’am,” and say nothing more, whereas others, I guess [?] say a lot more. But anyway. We just talked with them a little bit and then went to bed that evening. Big day ahead of us, of hiking (thank god, after two days of sitting in the car being glued to seats. Blargh!) But yeah, it was my first shower of the road trip, and that was, of course, quite a nice and lovely luxury.
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