From Boulder, to Brigham City (the nearest town with available hotel rooms--there was a pretty big conference in Logan while we were there) is right about 8 hours of drive time--and nearly all of it through Wyoming. Now, if you have never lived in Wyoming, you may not realize just how much "wide open space" is still out there in the American West. Driving I-80 through Wyoming means going 50 or so miles at a stretch with only the highway, power lines and snow fences as far as man made items as far as you can see. The towns you pass through from time to time are often tiny. It makes for a very easy and fast drive, if not particularly entertaining.
Somewhere along the way, someone got very enterprising. Near Cheyenne, and also about halfway between Laramie and Evanston (about in the middle of a 100 mile stretch between towns), you will find Little America stops. For MILES before hand there are billboards advertising the hotel, swimming pool, marble showers for truckers, playground and, the piece de resistance--50 cent soft serve ice cream cones.
It is a funny little slice of pure Americana. Of course, we did stop to stretch our legs and have some ice cream, but we had wisely tanked up before entering the long stretch between towns and had no need for their gas (priced about 25 cents a gallon higher than the towns on either end).
Pulling up to the Howard Johnson at about 6:00, my heart sank. It was SO run down from the outside. I almost just left and lost out money and hoped I could find another open room--but I knew most everything had been booked when I was looking a month ago.
Fortunately, the room itself was clean, though dated, with new mattresses and clean bedding. They even "upgraded" us from a room with a queen bed and pull out sofa to a two room suite with two queen beds and a pull out sofa. It wasn't nice, but it was doable for a couple of nights (thank goodness my mother in law is a GREAT sport).
(it was not messy like this when we arrived--I forgot to take photos until the next morning)
The next morning we drove up the "canyon" (four lane road, not at all what those of us who grew up in Nederland think of as a canyon lol) to Logan for a tour of the university, lunch and then Marika was scheduled to meet with an adviser for the department she is considering.
The campus is really pretty. It is up on a hillside overlooking the town, and right at the foothills of some lovely little mountains. There is lots of nice landscaping, and a mix of new and historic buildings--everything new also seems designed to have lots of natural light.
view from "the quad"
"Old Main"
Library interior
"The Barn (right in the central campus)
Marika was pretty impressed by what we saw and heard on the tour (as were the rest of us) and USU is still a top contender for us. When all was said and done, we were on campus nearly 7 hours (she had to wait a while to meet with the adviser). Afterwards, we wandered in downtown Logan just a little bit (it was over 100 degrees that day--not conducive to lots of walking around in the sun).
Once we were too hot to walk around more, we grabbed a quick dinner and headed back to our sad little hotel for a night of rest before driving back across the vast expanse of the not yet inhabited American West on Thursday.
It was a whirlwind three days--but actually quite fun and we saw lots of good scenery and got a good feel for a university that is truly a likely place that Marika will end up. All in all a great little side trip (HoJo and all).
--Hadley
No comments:
Post a Comment