Today is the next-to-last end to my journey: TFS and I part ways. As has become our habit, we have coffee with the newspapers to start the day, sitting outside the hotel with a view of the mountains along the western side of Salt Lake City. After a very very sad farewell at the airport I am on my own again, the first time since before Nashville. Sad, but that's our reality. The next two days are 8+ hours each of simple displacement, north along the eastern downslopes of the Rocky Mountains , all the attraction of the route in nature's hands - there isn't a lot of civilization between here and home. So, you get a picture wall.

Today was a surreal drive after the high-density living and driving world of Los Angeles. It was mostly-sunny with a few spots where the road skirted a rain cloud and the windshield was wetted and then dried. 8 hours on the road through semi-mountainous terrain and probably only about 100 vehicles on my side of the highway after Idaho Falls. Just the Cabrio and me hurtling through empty space, up and down hills and valleys. And bugs! I stopped a half-dozen times at least to wash my windshield, and the front of the Cabrio is fuzzy with mashed entomological carcasses. Spring has arrived here and for me it is like the calendar rolled back two months after spring-summer conditions were the norm in Los Angeles.