The Journey To Utah

As some of you may already know, Don and I have a rather uncommon approach for navigating through Life. Of course it manifests in our travels in various ways. We've observed countless times that the less 'we'/our egos get in the way, the more The Mystery/God/The Energy-Behind-All-Things (or whatever you want to call It) can work Its magic. "Thy will be done, not mine"; these words from The Lord's Prayer capture our approach beautifully. Although it has its challenges it also brings such an effortless and light quality to our lives. To the extent that we are successful in implementing it, it reduces a great deal the amount of mistakes we make!

This translates on a day to day basis by our focus on making as few major decisions as possible. (How can we really know what course of action is truly 'for the highest good' when so many unknown factors come into play?) Instead we pay close attention to what we call 'The Flow' or how things are naturally unfolding. The reason I'm bringing this up now is because the way that our Salt Lake City area stop came to be on our itinerary illustrates this particularly well.

Northern Utah Here We Come!
As we were traveling towards Mt Shasta a couple of weeks ago I looked at the map, trying to get a sense of how best to get to southern Utah where we had arranged to visit friends. When I checked my inbox later that same day, a message with the subject line 'Coming To Utah' was awaiting me. I had to blink twice as I thought I'd read wrong. The email came from the Fox family who were warmly inviting us into their home. I mean, talk about great timing! I knew then that Life was trying to tell us something, as this synchronicity just couldn't be ignored.

When I wrote back that we were going to St-George and inquired about their location, Angelica replied excitedly that they lived just "a few hours north". A closer look at Google Maps revealed that Eagle Mountain was in fact near Salt Lake City, roughly a 4 1/2 hour drive. Eeek! That's when I remembered that someone else from Salt Lake had contacted me months ago about a potential event with her raw group. At the time I had replied that I very much doubted we'd make it that far inland, but once again Life seemed to be having a different idea. And so we unexpectedly found ourselves heading towards yet more snowy lands. We knew that this was the right thing to do as everything fell so quickly into place to make this new stop happen.

Being winter and all I was a little concerned about the long 12 hour journey through Northern California, Nevada and Utah, part of which is mountainous terrain. But you know what? This turned out to be one of the smoothest, most relaxed and enjoyable drives since the beginning of our travels! The weather was gorgeous, the road quiet and dry and the scenery absolutely spectacular!

I took lots of photos (and I mean LOTS!) so I hope you'll bear with me as I share all this beauty with you!

Day 1: From Mt-Shasta, CA to Reno, NV
In spite of our friend Sathya tantalizing us with the possibility of staying in Mt Shasta one more day, we decided to take advantage of the good weather and begin our long trek east.

The first part of the journey was through forests and mountains...

... then snow covered fields.

Here we were at some 4000 feet.

And after all that snow, we suddenly found ourselves in desert land...

... with majestic snowy mountains in the distance.

I loved the different hues of greens, yellows, browns and even reds of the grass, brush and bushes contrasting with the white background.

 

We spent that first night at a motel in Reno (no, we didn't go to a casino! lol) and continued our travels early the next morning. 

Day 2: From Reno to Wells, NV

Throughout the day we were again surrounded by desert and mountain ranges. What an incredible landscape!

Near the town of Golconda at 5000 feet, mountaintops looked like small lumps sticking out of the ground.

In light of the present economic crisis, Don's message has been to 'buy gold' for a few years. We were amazed that without even having planned it, our route took us right into the heart of "Gold Country" through Battle Mountain and Carlin where some of the biggest gold mines in the world are located.

Crossing Emigrant Pass at 6114 feet

This next picture isn't the best with the reflection in the windshield, but a really neat rock formation popped up of nowhere and I barely had time to grab the camera.

Here you can see the East Humbolt Range lying ahead. Let's see what beautiful spectacle is awaiting us at the top of this hill crest.

Tada!

While witnessing all this natural beauty, time flew right by! We barely noticed that we'd traveled some 330 miles that day. We stopped at a motel in Wells, Nevada for the night. As usual we expertly 'moved in', bringing our juicer, Vitamix and other food prep essentials. We've become really good at doing this; half an hour after our arrival we were comfortably sitting on our beds and enjoying a raw meal consisting of soup, salad, crackers and spread.

Day 3: From Wells, NV to Eagle Mountain, UT 

We woke up to another cold but cloudless sunny day. As soon as we finished sipping on our morning juice and Don was done whipping us up a huge container of green smoothie, we began the last stretch of our long journey.

How can you not be filled with wonder and awe in front of all this! I am soooo grateful that we accepted Life's invitation to head that way.

Pequop Summit - almost 7000 feet

While driving through Silver Zone Pass, not long before the Utah border, we were so high in elevation that we were surrounded by clouds! It was truly magical!

Then the moment we crossed into Utah we were swallowed by what seemed like a huge cloak of fog. This lasted all the way to Salt Lake City. Ah well, we certainly couldn't complain... not after the incredible beauty we were blessed with for the rest of the trip. And on the positive side it allowed me to catch up on my blogging. ;-)

Phfew! This turned out to be quite the photo album! I hope you've enjoyed the show as much as we have!