Over Thursday night I had bad dreams. Mudslides in Denver and a mudfield of bronze figures that looked like the White Witch had been after them with her wand. Also being lost in an airport, the usual attempt to get somewhere by a certain time but getting distracted by the most pointless things. The latter I called usual travel anxiety.

We breakfasted at the Tamarisk Restaurant along the Green River. I am pretty sure I ordered buttermilk pancakes but when the waiter set the plate before me, he announced, "blueberry." I blurted, "I thought I said 'buttermilk'" and then immediately regretted it because of course he wanted to exchange them but these looked so good. I remembered that blueberries are good for me, told him I was happy with these, and I ate, nearly drooling with pleasure.

I love blueberries, and these were real blueberries and lots of them, as if Robert DeNiro's character in "Casino" had visited the kitchen doing berry patrol. Yummy. They're currently my favorite fruit, and blueberry has ever been my favorite yogurt and Nutrigrain flavor. The day I got back from Indianapolis I found a half gallon container of them at the warehouse store, and I ate them handful by the succulent handful for five blissful days.

In Organic Orbit another time this week, I also saw an article from USA Weekend listing ten foods for longevity ("Science says these 10 can help you live longer, better"). I read the list, which held no surprises: tomatoes, olive oil, red grapes, nuts, whole grains, salmon and other coldwater fish, blueberries, garlic, spinach, and tea. Then I read the explanation of each food, some of which did surprise me: "Olive oil: A famous researcher... once declared olive oil the main dietary reason for remarkably low mortality rates among Mediterranean populations." The ambrosia and nectar imbibed by Greek gods probably had a lot of olive oil in it; as well, Methuselah must have sucked down great quantities. Also, "Whole grains. The more whole grains you eat, the lower your odds of death." My goodness! You'd think all those generations of rye- and barley-chomping peasants might still walk the earth. Dunno about you, but I figure my odds of death are 100%.

So I ate my blueberry pancakes and three strips of bacon, a rare treat for me. I nearly shrieked when RDC pointed out the huge stripey spiders dropping on their threads behind me (through a window, but some of those spiders have glass-cutters in their spinerets). Nevertheless I was very happy until I got too full to finish my delicious breakfast. RDC swears the best pancakes ever came from a dive near Arches National Park, and based on these two instances, I hereby declare Utah the pancake capital of the U.S. Which is good, because besides those and the parks and monuments near and including Arches, the state seems to have little in its favor.

Then we drove. Utah looks like the recent seabed it is. Its hills, covered in coarse, dense sand, look at a distance as if draped in starched damask. Very little grows anywhere, which I choose to attribute to lingering salt; it looked like Tunis after Roman invaders sowed its fields with salt (to ensure a thorough conquest).

We drove through hills and mountains to whose tops (not quite peaks) clung vestigial clouds. "I wandered lonely as a cloud," said RDC, and I realized that Richard Adams put a little Wordsworth joke in Watership Down that I had never noticed, over 17 years of rereadings, nine of them after acing Romantic and Victorian Literature, until just then. Adams says rabbits don't say "It never rains but it pours," which isn't true, but instead "One cloud feels lonely." I have always thought that line glares awkwardly from the page like Hazel's hind leg, and perhaps this is why.

RDC gave me a hardcover of Watership Down for Christmas 1997, and, reading it immediately (instead of The Stand, which I often reread chez DMB, or The Unconsoled, which I had brought with me (these two being the extremes of my literary appetites), I commenced a reread of Watership Down. The different pagination made me notice several things my eye slips over in my dog-eared pulp paperback--like how British the bunnies are, calling one another old chap. (I gave that copy, to which I was much attached, to HAO, because she must read it and I couldn't bear to give it anonymously to Goodwill.)

Approaching Salt Lake City, I saw a sign for a ZCMI store and thought fondly of the Great Brain. Being younger sister to a Great Brain myself, my favorite of the series was J.D.'s solo adventures while Tom went off to school, Me and My Little Brain. I tried to remember what town the Fitzgeralds lived in and was gratified that "Adenville" appeared immediately in my head. I think it did so because HAO and I were wondering about that a few months ago and so the name was only a few layers deep. I looked for Adenville in our atlas, but didn't find it. Unlike Idaville, Adenville could have existed.

I also thought fondly of Maryanne, with whom I do not correspond and had made no attempt to connect with. Maryanne's not the kind of person I'd want to meet in a quick rest stop way, anyway. It might be a week before I'd finished saying hello.

Scanning radio stations in SLC, two in a row and then a third later on played Neil Diamond. I have not, 20 hours later, heard that he has died (I forgot to send out Celebrity Mortality Warnings for this road trip), so what excuse did the city have?

A non-ZCMI store, visible from the highway, had painted over its huge front aperture, "We have anything you could want--if we can find it." I like that. Also north of SLC we passed Almosta Ranch, which amused me.

Scanning radio stations some more, I stopped on one as a song began, thinking I knew it. Since I was driving, that station stayed on even after I recognized--in three notes--the Go-gos' "Goodbye to You."

We listened to an interesting bit on NPR about silent movies and sound. When movies were silent, since the audience couldn't hear the train bearing down behind the actor moseying along the tracks, neither did he. There were whole elaborate gags based on situations which are in life noisy (traffic, pianos, conversations) but which in silent movies happened silently, if that was convenient. All of these gags were lost with sound.

There are lots of towns in Utah called "Ranch Exit."

Note: this was my joke. I counted seven such "towns" on the drive, and RDC never corrected me then. But now, RDC has just been reading this over my shoulder, which I shall have to clarify he is not permitted to do unless and until it's on the web and public, and he told me how those weren't really towns. For the Climbing Tree's sake I know that, but he thought since I was writing it here I meant it. Joke? Comment on how isolated a life these Utahans lead when they have to use an interstate merely to go to town? I was going to say "to buy a quart of milk," but a) who buys just a quart anyway and b) these people probably grow their own milk and c) ditto about mail. So it's probably not "merely" to go to town.

What I have seen of rural Utah, except Moab, seems extremely isolated and insular and with not the best soil for anything. Idaho's interstate stretches are more thoroughly farmed, and Wyoming's ranches are just as isolated but not as sparse, and it was only the very eastern bit of Oregon that depressed me. Utah, though. Oof. It all looked like the alkali flats that swindlers were trying to con the citizenry of Adenville with until the Great Brain saved the day.

We did pass one bit that I would like to see someday, that I bet RDC and his uncle, Lionel train fans both, would enjoy: the Golden Spike National Historic Site. I wonder if that spike was golden at all, or just gilded, because I certainly wouldn't want to travel in a train over rails hitched together with anything as malleable as 24-carat Au.

Passing into Idaho, we noticed that Idaho has this thing called a trip permit. I wondered if I was too Irishly freckled, and RDC even worse, Italian tending toward Sicilian, to be allowed in. We snuck over the border, though, and stopped for lunch in Heyburn, Idaho, at a place called the Wayside CafŽ. I could tell it would be a good spot because of the large rotating "EAT" sign overhead. I had the best grilled cheese ham and tomato sandwich I've had since I left Connecticut, home of Kathy John's in Storrs. Don't go there if you've any aversion to stale tobacco-y grease, unless your predilection for excellent short-order food and generous gobs of ice cream is stronger. The Wayside also made its own french fries, just like the kind Mother made: scrumptious and doing their part to send you to an early grave. I should tell my mother about those fries. You know, I am capable of complimenting her when the occasion warrants it.

While I drove, I did not jot down ("jot," speaking of BJWL, is one of her words) the various things that caught my eye. I have reconstructed these entries from notes in my DayRunner and one entry I wrote Saturday night. Mostly, though, it's from memory, even though RDC did most of the driving.

After the Wayside CafŽ, I drove. Eastern Oregon failed to enthrall me, and I felt like a schmoe for failing to see the appeal of any rural area (except Utah--I am allowed one exception, surely--but not two). As soon as we slipped carefully down an impressive steepness of switchbacks, the countryside began to pick up. There was an incredible thunderstorm in the late afternoon, perhaps the one that struck Beth later that night in Idaho. Magnificent. I can easily believe it was the most severe one she ever experienced. Westward, Oregon got more interesting, if not less heartwrenching: big fields of poplar or cottonwood tree, some fast-growing pulpy species grown and harvested for paper, probably.

"Spinning Wheel" came on the radio. "Is this Earth Wind and Fire?" I asked RDC.
"No, it's Blood Sweat and Tears."
"Oh. I always confuse the two of them with Three Dog Night."
Well, I think I'm funny.

We saw a marquée-style traffic sign with but a single character, a period. It must have been the Ulysses quote of the day. Yesterday's was "ineluctable modality of the visible."

Our original itinerary called for us to spend this second night in La Grande, but we were such clever drivers that we stopped much farther down the Columbia, in The Dalles (Anita, I stole your link), Oregon. "Dalles" allegedly means "narrows (of a river)" in French, so why the town is not Les Dalles I don't know.

And here we were, following the Columbia downstream, retracing Lewis & Clark's and the later settlers' trail. We were not as adventurous as they and did not quest for interesting food at 10:00 p.m. but made turkey sandwiches in our Super 8 room. Unlike the Lewis and Clark, we ate no dog on this trip. (L&C & Co. distrusted the color of salmon and preferred to eat canine rather than fish flesh. Collectively: "Eewwww!")

As we snuggled into the squishy bed, I remarked that after three nights of hotel beds I would be happy to sleep on our Therma-Rests, which I'm sure would not earn the Shelleyness Seal of Princess and Pea Approvalª. An expression of horror leapt onto RDC's face and occupied it. "Where are they?" he asked. "You didn't!" I exclaimed in surprise. Now that all the camping stuff is civilly in one spot (strewn throughout the back closet), RDC didn't remember to look behind the couch (obviously Blake hadn't helped him pack, plus he's not allowed on the Good furniture, now that we have some) where the Therma-Rests live, fully expanded. They're only a half inch thick, but they're pretty comfy. Certainly comfier than nylon tent over naked campsite.

There was no remedying the situation at that hour, and after a brief debate of quiet & stuffy vs. outside noise & fresh air, we crashed (windows closed, air-conditioning on).