Chinese mayhem

  Price, Utah
Thursday, June 21, 2007

We decided to not stay in Gallup for long, it was just too depressing. Instead we passed shiprock, probably just as fun, and ended up in Farmington. Farmington is a nice little town with a couple of cinemas and a couple of bars. We didn't really do much in farmington but we stayed there for three nights anyway, it's just nice to relax a bit. And also to actually get to see the local bars. The first we got to was pretty much indian (those native american indians, not the eastern style). We were told we did not belong there and that we should go to the other place in town where there would be tons of good looking ladies. I guess they were trying to be nice. Of course we took their advice and headed off to the other place, which was pretty much empty and the few patrons were defenitely not aerobics teachers.

Enough of New Mexico. We had heard a lot good about Boulder in Colorado and off we went. Planned as usual we called our prospective couchsurfing hostess about an hour before we arrived in Boulder, that's what I call notice. It was good enough apparently so we got a really nice house to stay in for a few days. Boulder is definitely different, it's more like New York than most other places in the US. It was a nice change. People are sporty in Colorado, and so our hostess. She was to run up the mountain in the evening, so my and Robert decided to take a short hike up the mountain meanwhile. It's not like we're fit enough to run up there. The hike up was bad enough, we were seriously thinking about quitting the 1 mile walk up. I guess sitting in a car all day doesn't help. However, we did not quit, and we were rewarded with a splendid view. It was awesome in real life I tell you.

That trip up the mountain was not over because we were not walking anymore. Those calves hurt so badly the day after. That's when we went to Six Flags again (not the one in Kentucky where a girl got her legs chopped off) and had a great time. I'm sure it's gonna happen again, amusement parks are great. We didn't really do much more in Boulder, except for beating our hostess and her boyfriend in Boggle. A lovely little game of word creation.

We left Boulder thinking we should stay in a little village in the mountains in Colorade. Somehow we didn't feel like that so we entered Utah at 10pm. We were a bit suspicious about the many motels in Grand Junction, the last outpost before Utah, but didn't consider it more than that. 50 miles into Utah and we hadn't seen one building we started to wonder what was up. We had seen three road signs saying, "Cisco, No Services", and such, not the best encouragement. We finally say a gas station and decided there was something in Utah, there should be, we heard so much about those mysterious Mormons. Price, the only city on the map within some kind of reasonable distance (except for Moab that was somehow out of the question when we couldn't find a couchsurfer there), was sighted at 1 am. At the time it felt like a metropolis, but after seeing it in daylight it's more like Magdalena, NM, maybe the most depressing place in the states. Of course there is Buffalo, but I think Magdalena would win, or whatever you would call it.

An observation of today was that the second best food so far was the dinner in Cleveland, which was also cheap and the best food so far was the dinner in Truth or Consequences which was not cheap, but really really good. On the opposite side the debate was about the McDonalds bagle and the food we had for breakfast today, some Chinese chow mein. Realizing that we could hardly even eat anything of the Chinese food even though we were really hungry, it comes out as a winner in the Worst Food of the Trip. Worst atmosphere is still Magdalena though.