Utah - A Land of Transitions

Utah contains landscapes similar to those of many of the states that surround it. Perhaps its most famous area is in the south, where you find all of the fantastic national parks with their brilliantly colored rock formations, which are reminiscent of northern Arizona and New Mexico. But not all of the state is like that. To a large extent, central western Utah resembles Nevada, with its brown hills dotted with shrubs and its wide expanses of desert.



This is pretty far south of the Great Salt Lake area - but even here you can smell the salt in the air. At least here it doesn't get all over your feet and car!



Sunrise comes slowly in the shadows of the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City and its many suburbs. I was surprised by the amount of traffic that now pervades the area - it really seems to have grown in recent years. Not, in my opinion, an improvement.



Route 6 east of Salt Lake City - the road leading towards Wyoming, as you can tell by the greener, more tree-filled landscape. There's far more traffic through here than one would imagine. A truck came barreling down the mountain on me so fast it nearly ran me over! Fortunately I realized the driver wasn't going to be able to stop in time, and I took advantage of a nearby pullout to get out of the way.



The descent into Price, Utah. Those are some rocks! Perhaps one of the most incredible things about Utah is the way the roads have been built. They did an astonishing job of putting highways in where it seems no highway ought to go. This reminded me of the drive along I-15 from Arizona, where the cliff faces hover so close over the road that they nearly seem to be trying to crowd you off it.



Stratified rock layers in the so-called "Dinosaur Diamond" in the upper northeast corner of Utah near Colorado. All along the highway you see signs identifying the age of the layer of exposed rock and the fossils that can be found there.

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