What’s Up with Outlaws?

Sandwiched between Nevada and Wyoming—which promote their badass, rugged selves with outlaw-monikered cafes, car dealerships, and dime stores—is well-heeled Utah.

Yeah, right. Our stay in Salt Lake City almost didn’t happen last night because the Salty ones sooo love Fat Tuesday that they booked almost every room in town. That left us overnighting at the “downtown” Econolodge, at which our non-smoking room smelled like fetid tobacco and mold, the smear near our flimsy front door may have been blood, and Mardi Gras revelers next door carried on till 3 a.m.

We barely slept. Luckily we were so appalled by the environs that, even before we learned of the snowstorm set to blanket Wyoming today, we decided to leave early in the morning. Wyoming’s stretch of I-80 can be brutal to drive in winter because it lies across a relative plain that cuts across the Rockies.

This is good for a transcontinental road but bad for preventing blowing snow and black ice hazards. According to a highway sign at the western edge of Wyoming, 22 have died since January on its segment of I-80. There are other permanent, highway-department signs about what to do when — not if — the interstate shuts down due to weather, when to disengage cruise control because of road conditions, variable speed limit markers to slow traffic in rough weather, and a crew out today fixing a guardrail on a bridge that apparently had just been driven through.

Snow was scheduled to hit the eastern half of Wyoming by midday, so we figured if we left by 6 a.m. we’d likely beat it.

At various points we were slowed by a mysterious fog bank, some kind of thick-haired deer huddled near the roadside munching brush, un-washable windshield dirt blocking our view (our Berkeley mechanic topped us off last week with wiper fluid NOT containing antifreeze — a staple of probably nowhere except California), black ice, sleet, and ruts in the concrete.

A few miles before Laramie, we could see the storm creep north as we were racing east/southeast. It added enough drama to keep us awake at the tail end of a seven-hour drive on three hours of sleep. We made it to Cheyenne around 1:30, napped, and watched the snow fall for the rest of the afternoon.

Along the way I stopped in a rest area I couldn’t help but imagine had been visited by Dick Cheney, which nearly stopped me midstream. Instead, I noticed something: the self-styled renegades of Wyoming have not one pen stroke of graffiti in their roadside restrooms. Outlaws, my saddle.