Day Five and Weary of This Road

Days on cruise control:  5

Distance traveled:  788 miles

Travel time: 11 hours, 15 minutes

Total trip odometer:  2,836 statute miles

This trip from Fort Pierce, Florida to our home in Olalla, Washington is about 800 miles shorter than the same one we made in January 2012 in the opposite direction. Then, because it was January, we didn’t want to risk driving over the Continental Divide in the dead of winter, so we went south on Interstate 5 from Seattle to Los Angeles, then east on Interstate 10 all the way to Florida, over 4,000 miles one way. We’re glad it’s shorter this time.

We pulled out of Denver at 7am in cool, mild weather. They had a huge blizzard in the mountains a week ago, so we were happy to have no concerns this week. A couple hours later we crossed into Wyoming, state #9 for this trip.

Wyoming went on for a LOOOOONG time! But at least the scenery included mountains, some snow in the distance, and a few wild animals including elk and deer, though we got no photos of either.

And then it was Utah, state #10 where the mountains and rocks, up close instead of big but distant like Wyoming, were pretty, . . . . .

. . . . followed three hours later by Idaho, State #11.  We planned to spend the night in Twin Falls, ID further east, but we want tomorrow to be a somewhat shorter day, so kept going long after we were tired and tempted to quit.

Finally we pulled into Mountain Home, Idaho (a little east of Boise) and called it a day.