Today (just like yesterday) I’ll be spending my time in Moab. A little city that really resembles a very small town near the Arches. An arch is a big rock with a hole in it, so you can walk through it. Yesterday I was traveling towards Salt Lake City when I stopped at some parking lot/view point to have a look around. Here I encountered some ex-Dutch people that had been living in America for quite some years. They told me that going to Detroit was a mistake (as I already figured out myself) and they told me going to Salt Lake City would be another mistake. It was far better to drive to the south, eventually ending up in the same place, Vegas.

Once I arrived at Moab (yesterday) first thing I did was find a library to browse the Internet and then I went to the visitors center to find out all the local attractions. My coincidence the guy working at the visitor center was a Dutch guy! The funny thing was that he knew I was Dutch after saying about three words in English and we directly switched to speaking Dutch. He had acquired a heavy American accent, which made his Dutch sound pretty cool.

The Dutch guy told me I absolutely needed to see a certain arch during sundown at around 20:30 so I bought a little map and that evening I went to see the arch. The walk was estimated to take around 45 to 60 minutes, but I walked there in only 33 minutes. After arriving the view of the arch was impressive, but the weather was not so good. A lot of wind and I could see thick rainclouds at the horizon. While I waited for the sun to set the rain slowly started to fall, making me think about why I had brought so many water with me. To avoid more rain I skipped the sunset and started heading for home.

Today I’ll go and view another arch… said to be the biggest in the world. The arch I visited yesterday was said to be the most beautiful according to some people from Utah.

Today I arrived in Utah in some small village. First I will try and find a motel/inn/hotel and then see if there is any action around here. At the local library there is a tight regime regarding the Internet. A 15 minutes maximum… wankers.

The Rocky Mountains were very nice to see! Sadly I did not spot any bear or tiger or something like that. After a trip through the rugged park I arrived at a little hotel that was really meant for people skiing or snowboarding but because there was almost no snow there were a lot of rooms available.

The nice thing about the hotel was the welcoming package.
· A carton with a serial breakfast
· An energy bar
· A little tube with skin cream
· and…. yes…. medicines!

I’m now the happy owner of 4 asperine/cafeine mixes and for extra strong painkillers.

I did not yet eat the medicines. I think I’ll save them for when I go boarding again. :-p

Right now I’m going to have a look at the Rocky Mountains.

Yeah! I did it… :-D In the neighborhood of Denver I managed to find some gold… well, only three little pieces, and each of these pieces are smaller then the gold you find in a bottle of GoldStrike, but still!

I also noticed I need to change my clocks again! All of them need to be reset to one hour earlier.

After my search for gold I went of a trip through the ‘Caves of the Wind’. I just barely heard any wind blowing through the cave and all the stalactites and stalagmites, most of which had been removed by tourists in the past, were only visible through a big fence.

Going from Kansas City to Denver is a long drive and even more so on the map of America that I’m using. Still I don’t think it will take me two days of driving as I expected and as I told some people… I think it can be done in about eight hours.

As a little boy I can clearly remember my father one day bringing home a special type of sailor cookies. This was a backed though of about one centimeter thick and about a 6 or 8 centimeter diameter. As soon as I took a bite (which proved quite difficult) from this rock solid dry bread the tasteless substance absorbed all the saliva from my mouth and left my mouth dry. The substance slowly passed to my stomach and any feeling of hunger acutely disappeared.

The reason for the previous paragraph is that before my long trip to Denver I prepared myself my buying some bread for the trip. I bought round doughnut like pieces of bread and ham, cheese and lettuce. I wanted to make myself some BLT’s, but after the first bite I realized my mistake. The bread tasted like the ‘sailor cookie’ I remembered from my youth. The only difference being a weird sweet after taste.

Leaving Kansas was nice. Suddenly I entered an area will lots of little oil pumping machines. These little oil pumps looked funny and were like grown men toys.

Once in Colorado the little oil pumps had disappeared and now there was only grass… Enormous seas of grass everywhere.

Kansas City is a very boring place. The only good thing is that I finally bought a digital camera so the number of photos I take should increase. The weather is nothing special… gray skies and even some rain now and then. The weather channel is saying that it is an all time low for this area at this time.

I just cannot help myself, and I think it is a genetic thing, but I just notice. In the USA have notices a large amount of Hummers driving around. In Detroit I saw a car with very very big rims and, yes, spinners!

Furthermore I did not see any smart (small car) and of course not a single carver.

Speed enforcement using cameras is not common at all, and I haven’t seen any officers with laser guns either. I noticed that the police officers here like to just drive the entire day and every now and then pull over a speeding car. Still this has not happened to me. I did find out that in my own car when I’m passing over a freeway with little traffic that the kick-down will quickly raise my maximum speed. Although it’s not 180kmpu it does give a nice sensation to see the dial indicating the speed pass the maximum value.

Little Rock is a city with a little center, and around that center you can find a huge number of shops. One of the shops I visited was about the size of three football field and only sold fake flowers. A huge amount of fake stuff. Another business was similar to a Gamma or a Karwei, but bigger and sold everything for home improvement. I entered and directly notices little tractors that were for sale.

Eventually I did buy a nice cap. Once that emits light in the dark and which I will bring the next time we go snowboarding (if I have enough courage) :-p

I seem to have crossed a timezone while driving a few days ago because suddenly all my clocks (my phone and the clock in my car) are one hour early. It was a strange sensation because I only found out slowly. Normally you take the plane and you can correct the time beforehand. For me it results in one hour more of difference, what brings the time difference with Holland to 7 hours already!