(Photos to come later...)

Gas Price Index: $3.54 Conaco Toole, UT

(As a translation note, we passed a Deeth Starr Road. Maybe you will now understand the writings.)

Stardate May 12, 2008 3:25 pm

Dun, dun-da-ta-dun, dun-da-ta-dun, da-ta-dun, Dun-dun, dun-ta-duh-da-dun

In a galaxy not so far away…

After completing lengthy repairs to the Davis class vessel’s rubber stabilizer (Tires. Earthspeak translations will be provided in bold.), refueling, and stocking up on Starbucks supplies, we left from the spaceport of Elko, NV. Our two ships traveled through the void of the desert, with the occupants listening to the sounds of old earth country music.

One of the members of our crew, Ensign Sara Hector, is having a Solar Rotation Celebration (Birthday), and is now nine solar rotations old. The party is this evening, and will involve presents, a cake, and other festivities.

While passing through the Utah galaxy, we stopped at the small desert planet of Salt Lake City. On the first starcruise we took with a complete crew (family) after the adoption of new crew members, this was one of our stops. We had taken a group photo, here is the updated version:

Planet Salt Lake City has not improved with age, and still smells horrible, due to the body of water from which this planet derives its name. In spite of this, our Chief Medical Officer, Thomas Hector, assures us that the atmosphere is still capable of supporting human life. I have my doubts.

Upon departure from Salt Lake, I was briefly able to open a communication portal, and update our travel log. The portal collapsed before I could send graphic additions, so those will be added when this communication is submitted.

The temperature has been quite low, and even resulted in our passing through an ice crystal cloud (snow) while passing through the Wasatch Mountain Range Nebula. This spacial anomaly only lasted
about ten seconds.

End of Log.

Continued Later that evening. (2am the next day, to be exact.)

While looking for a place in which to have dinner, a small dot on the map was noticed. The name of the dot was “Little America”, it was mentioned casually by the navigator (me) to the driver (Thomas), and when Mom heard that name she started screaming, in a happy manner.

Apparently she remembers stopping in this little speck of a town when she was the young age of seven, over 40 years ago. It was fifty miles down the road, and we were getting a mite peckish. Still, Mrs. Davis, who was riding in our car agreed to the potential of stopping there, as long as it wasn’t, in her words, “hokey”. Once we got there, it was realized that hokey was to mild a term for what we saw. It was a hotel/truck stop/gas station all constructed in a brick Philadelphia motif, one even looked like a little Independence Hall., To add to the bizarre situation, the buildings were topped with plywood cutouts of penguins:

My thoughts exactly. There is a point where the hokeiness exceeds a certain point, and that makes going there an adventure. This, combined with the facts that the next food was 30 miles down the road, the natives were getting restless, and that Mom was pushing to relive a childhood memory, meant we were going to be eating in “Little America”. The food was pretty good, and we consumed all of the crackers brought to our table.

It is bitterly cold in Wyoming. We found this out by experience. We left Little America, and began driving over the Rocky Mountains. As it was night, I was driving. The weather was cloudy, but not threatening, not threatening until we began climbing the mountains. As we crossed the 7000’ foot mark, it began snowing. This time it was more than ten seconds. Listening to the radio, the forecast was up to a half inch of snow expected in the town of Rawlins, for which we had set our sights.

We reached Rawlins at 10:30pm, and since it was still snowing, we decided that getting all the way over the mountain pass would be wise. Best to be stuck on the East side of the Rockies, rather than the West. The pass was 8869’, and the snow was sticking as we crept at 25 MPH over the peak. After switching drivers a couple of times, and refueling once. We made it into Cheyenne, WY, at 3am, strangely enough, pulling into the Cheyenne Little America, which was a copy of the Original, which we had visited earlier.  Goose said this was punishment for our making fun of Mom at the last Little America.  I am inclined to agree.