Yellowstone to Coalville
We had thought about driving to Cedar City or Nephi to prepare for the Grand Canyon drive, though 7-8 hours seemed a bit heavy, so we stuck a virtual pin in the map and up popped Coalville, just 5 hours away.
The lady on the phone said, “We are in the mountains,” so I booked it. A bit like West Yellowstone, this wasn’t a cheap hotel at $133 but we were booking from McDonalds and it was noisy – one child in particular was frantically shaking the sphere at the top of the play centre while screaming like a banshee.
I had been there for over an hour and only bought a coke, so we were pushing for time.
Tip 20 – McDonalds has a higher purpose than cheap unhealthy food.
Don’t go back to Coalville…
The drivetime to Coalville was 5 hours which is not too bad on American roads with a 3.7 litre minivan and cruise control. we had the benefit of driving through Grand Teton National Park, so it was a nice scenic route.
Tip 21 – Cruise control and big cars and vans with huge engines, make driving in the US and Canada like playing a computer simulation in an armchair. Easy.
We arrived quite late – 10.30pm, fully knackered. At the junction where we had to exit, there was a police car blocking the road. Add a police helicopter, two fire engines and another few police cars and we felt that things were not going to go so well. The cops flagged us to carry on so we had to go 20 minutes to the next junction, come back off and go back the same way.
When we got back to the hotel junction, absolutely nothing there.
Either we had a group hallucination, they had cleared up really fast, or they had overreacted. Hmm, I wonder which one is most likely.
Once we arrived at the hotel, I asked the reception what had happened which was met with a resounding ‘dunno’. She thought it might have been a man having a heart attack.
The following morning I asked again and they thought it might have been a pile up. Hmmm, not on our stretch of motorway as we sailed past the junction disappointed.
Tip 22 – See tips 10 and 12
Next stop, Park City. This is where several of the events at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002 were held. Here is a nifty snap of the ski jumps.
