Note: This post is from September 4, 2008

We woke up in Craig, Colorado, and went to the local McDonald's for breakfast. If you are careful what you order, you can actually get some decent food at McDonald's, and even the coffee's not half-bad. Of course, the odds of actually getting what you order vary greatly depending on where you are in the country. I'm not going to say the people in the middle parts of America are dumber than those on the coasts, but anywhere in the Midwest or the West you pretty much have to order by the number if you want to avoid blank stares.

The coffee of errors

I'm in the habit of drinking a coffee every morning. Now coffee is an area where people generally know exactly what they want and how they want it, and I'm no exception. This is never a problem in Massachusetts, where there is a Dunkin' Donuts on every corner - those guys can sling cups o' joe faster than Randy Moss can score a touchdown. It's even less of an issue in California, where the local Starbucks baristi are famous for remembering which customer likes his half-caf part-skim grande mocha latte with a touch of cinnamon. Not so here. Along the big cross-country highways, if you want a coffee, it's McDonald's or nothing.

And normally even that is fine for me. My coffee needs are not actually all that complex. A simple American brew, with milk or cream. That's it, nothing else, nothing too complicated. Sometimes, if the weather's hot, I like an iced coffee. For some reason, I had the hardest time persuading the paper-hat-wearing employees that I didn't want sugar in my iced coffee. This happened in at least four different McDonald's restaurants:

Eddy: I'll have an iced coffee with just cream, please.

Cashier: You want a iced coffee? What flavor y'all want? We got French Vanilla, Hazelnut, mo--

E: Just plain, please. No flavors. No sugar. Just cream.

C: Four creams?

E: No. Just cream. Just regular, coffee-flavored coffee, with cream.

C: Regular? Ok, the regular comes with cream and sugar. Is that what you want?

E: Yeah, but no sugar please.

C: Ok, hold on. Squints quizzically at the cash register for 30 seconds, then, to the manager: Hey Darlene! How do I do a iced coffee wit no sugar, no nothin'?!

Manager comes to the register, presses a few buttons.

Manager: Y'all set, honey.

Five minutes later, the coffee shows up, tasting like cotton candy.

Eddy: Sigh.

Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs!

Anyway, we continued on the Dinosaur National Monument, a big national park on the Colorado-Utah border. There are two entrances, one in each state, and we decided to check them both out. The Colorado part is known for its scenery, and the Utah part is supposed to be chock-full of dinosaur fossils. Very exciting!

We took a part of the driving tour of the Colorado section, and it really is spectacularly scenic. By this point we had been driving through the Rockies for a long time, and we were experiencing a sort of scenery fatigue -- you can only view so many breathtaking views before you have to start breathing again -- but these views matched or surpassed everything we had seen so far. There are walking trails leading along deep canyons, through areas filled with twisted trees and unusual rock formations. And the best part was there was hardly anyone to share the views with. We saw only one other car. We felt like we were seeing real unspoiled nature.

Next, the Utah section. This, they say, is the place to go if you like fossils and dinosaurs. And who doesn't like dinosaurs? We were psyched for the chance to see some real paleontology in action.

We took a 1.5 mile hike through the main excavation area and saw one or two rocks that kinda-sorta might have looked like they were once dinosaur bones. Luckily, there were white arrows spray-painted on the rocks, or we would have missed them. Supposedly, the old visitor center, which is now closed because it was deemed structurally unsound, had some impressive exhibits, but now there is just a temporary visitor center with a plastic triceratops.

Probably the best part of Dinosaur National Monument was being in a town called Dinosaur, Colorado, on a street called Brontosaurus Drive.

Utah

Crestfallen by the lack of dinosaurs, we continued on through Utah. The tall pointy tree-filled Rockies of Colorado gave way to rugged scrubby hills in Utah. There are still some pretty big peaks, but the land has a different feel to it, a different color scheme. I'm constantly impressed at the variety of scenery our country has to offer. I feel like you could plop me down anywhere along this trip, and I would be able to tell you which state I was in.

Driving into Salt Lake City from the east is quite an experience. The descent from the mountains towards the lake is very dramatic, especially because people around there drive like complete idiots. While a big rig struggles up or down a seven percent grade at 30 MPH, locals in their SUVs weave in and out of traffic at 70-80. I would be shocked if there are not a ton of accidents.

In SLC, we walked around a bit and visited Temple Square. There are some nice Mormon buildings: a cathedral, a tabernacle, an assembly hall, and so on. There are also a bunch of polite young attractive Mormon women ready to answer questions -- a little too polite, it seemed. They weren't overtly pushy, but it did feel as if I were being sold something, like conversion.

Other than that Salt Lake is a cute little city in a very scenic location. You can see the mountains from almost everywhere, and there is a domed State House up high.

Outside Salt Lake City to the west is the Great Salt Lake and the Great Salt Lake Desert (yes it does seem odd to name a desert after a lake, but there you go). We caught Rt 80 out and had a nice view of the lake from the road. After the lake, there is still a lot of salt, but not as much water. That's why it's a desert, I guess. Supposedly, race cars can reach wicked high speeds on these "salt flats," so the famed Bonneville Speedway is around here. Many land-speed records have been set there. It made me wonder, as I drove along the bumpy, poorly maintained blacktop of Rt 80, with miles of salty desert on either side, if the salt is so nice to drive on, why bother to pave it at all?

Driving through the Utah desert was really beautiful at sunset, which seemed to last forever. We spent the night in Wendover, on the Utah-Nevada border. There are a couple casinos on the Nevada side (technically West Wendover), but nothing too exciting. Tomorrow, we continue west, west, and more west. Yep, we're going west tomorrow. Not east. West.