LA or Bust - 2009 Trip - Day 2

Start Location: Ontario, OR
Ending Location: Nephi, UT
Miles Today: 481
Trip Miles: 955
States Visited: 4
Provinces Visited: 0
Low Temp: 55.1° F
High Temp: 93.2° F
Min Elevation: 2155'
Max Elevation: 5525'

Route Map:

A much better start today.  The weather was dry, the sky was clear, and the traffic was very light.  We stayed on I-84 all the way through Idaho and into Utah.  The entire way through Idaho the roads were virtually empty.  Even when we went through some construction areas where traffic was down to only one lane in each direction, we never slowed down.

All that changed after lunch once we merged onto I-15 in northern Utah.  Traffic was somewhat heavier and then, about 10 miles north of Ogden, traffic came to a screeching halt.  We were stop and go for about 45 minutes.  Although that doesn't sound too bad if you're in an air conditioned car, it's a completely different story on an 850 pound motorcycle.  It's very difficult to keep going in a straight line at 2 or 3 miles an hour and even harder in full leathers under a bright sun and 85+ degrees.  When we finally got to the problem, it was an accident involving a large travel trailer.  Although the accident vehicles were in the median, the police had one lane shut down completely. Linda got a couple of good pictures of the problem vehicles.  Make sure you check out the shark pictures as well.

We thought traffic would improve once we passed the accident but the next 125 miles were heavy traffic with lots of boats and RVs returning from the holiday weekend.  We were both beat by the time we got to our motel for the night.  We made 481 miles today but it felt like many more.

Tomorrow we get off I-15 and head south for about 50 miles on route 28 and then head east on I-70/US 50.  It seems that north/south routes like I-5, I-15, I-75, etc. tend to be much more crowded than east/west routes like I-90, I-84, I-80, etc. - at least that's our experience.  We'll see if that holds out tomorrow.  By the time we get to Grand Junction, CO, we'll have to make a decision whether to follow I-70 or US 50.  It looks like 50 will take us by several national parks that we haven't visited yet so we are leaning towards that route.  Stay tuned tomorrow to see which way we go.

We also started posting graphs each day with the temperature and elevation profiles for the day.  It took a while to get everything set up in Excel but it works great and will be a nice record to have.