Road Trip, Day 4

I drove almost 1000 miles before my tires hit even a patch of snow. The roads were clear through Salt Lake City, past the turn-off to Park City, through Heber, Duschene, Roosevelt, and Neola. It wasn’t until I turned off to White Rocks that the roads were more snow and ice than pavement.

Poor little White Rocks. I always feel sad whenever I pass the tiny cemetery that is really just a patch of gravely dirt, decorated with plastic flowers and personal memorabilia out in the middle of brush and fields of grazing cattle. This is high desert, not the lush green one thinks of when picturing farm land. This land is more harsh and more remote. It's also Ute Indian reservation land. The government didn't know, over a hundred years ago when this became Ute land, that it is a land rich in natural gas, and minerals. You wouldn't know it though, to see how these people live. Turning at the humble little intersection that parades as a town, White Rocks cannot hide its poverty.

Several miles later I made the final turn to Mom’s. I could see the small house and its soft blue color sitting beneath the giant elm trees, snow-covered and void of leaves this time of year. Fantastic ice icicles hung from the eaves. Snow crunched beneath my fur-lined boots as I walked up the ramp to the back porch door. I haven’t been in this much snow since the year I went to Germany and Austria for Christmas. This felt colder. The temperature was 18 degrees. I’ve been complaining for awhile now that I miss the four seasons. Well, welcome home. I’ll have to get used to this, but I look forward to the challenge.

The house front. The longest icicle is longer than Mom is tall.

This is the back of the house. It's hard to see in this picture but there's an even longer icicle here, first seen through the kitchen window. Fantastic.