June 30th, 2025
Enjoy a short read for a change! 😉
We have done the drive from Las Vegas, Nevada to Salt Lake City, Utah many times in our lives since we lived in Salt Lake City for four years before retiring and would go to “Vegas” a couple of times a year. The drive is all freeway, and it used to only have one section at 80mph (130kmph) but now much of the drive is that fast. Driving our truck, going that fast, would use way to much petrol so Fran stayed around 10-15% slower. The part through the Arizona Strip is still quite enjoyable.
The price of gas in Beaver Dam, Arizona on this stretch of the drive was $2.69 a gallon, so much cheaper than in Nevada and what we expect to find in Utah.
We didn’t stop much enroute and were in Salt Lake City by 5pm Mountain Time so we’d lost an hour entering the state after driving 668 km / 415 mi. Doug had booked us a hotel in the suburb of Midvale, near where we first lived when we moved here back in 2008. The weather here is sunny like Vegas but not quite as hot as when we left Vegas. Still 38C / 100F but again a dry heat and quite bearable in the early evening. The mountains that nearly surround the city, had barely any snow left and were spectacular as always. (sorry forgot to take photos!)
At the Park Inn by Radisson, we paid $80 for a two queen room with bath, fridge, microwave, Wi-Fi and free parking as well as free breakfast which was quite crappy so we didn’t partake. It was clean and quiet and we enjoyed a soak in the hot tub after settling in. The pool was outdoors but the hot tub was is in an enclosed room off to the side.
We went to dinner at Fratelli’s, our fave restaurant here that we visit every time we pass through. They make the best Neapolitan pizza in the city and their bruschetta is not bad either!
We were both up early after lousy sleeps and were on the road by 7 Pacific Time. We are trying to stay on Pacific Time since we’ll be back on it in a couple of days.
Happy Canada Day!
Recently, surprisingly, we’d heard about a geological site northeast of the city that we’d never seen so that was our first and only non gas/potty break stop.
It was the Devil’s Slide in I84:
Devil’s Slide is a geological formation located near the border of Wyoming in northern Utah’s Weber Canyon. The Slide consists of two parallel limestone strata that have tilted to lie vertical, protruding 12 m / 40’ out of the mountainside. Intervening layers have erodedmore quickly, forming a channel running hundreds of feet down the mountain. The distance between the two slabs is around 7.6 m / 25’.
Then we just drove and drove and drove on I84 until we got into and across Idaho to the city of Ontario just inside Oregon – that was nearly 719 km / 447 miles and enough for one day.
Here are some photos we took as we drove from the Devil’s Slide to Ontario, Oregon. The scenery varied and the weather was perfect.
The Quality Inn ($104) inOntario, gave us a typical king room and our only complaint really was the Wi-Fi – we couldn’t connect and the front desk was NO help. We ended up calling the 1-866 number and finally got it sorted as our data is getting low and we don’t want to renew it as we leave the US in two days.
We had dinner in with our own food and just tried to stay cool and relax. The temps here are still around 38C / 100F and the sun is shining!
Wednesday, saw us make it to Yakima, Washington which was a much shorter driving day.
Photos along the drive:
The price of gas has steadily being going up: In Salt Lake we paid $3.05, Idaho: $3.27, Oregon: $3.59 and in Washington we paid $3.89.
We stopped at Costco for the aforementioned cheapest gas, and then went inside to shop (and Fran got herself one of their $1.50 hot dog deals). We didn’t get a great deal of stuff there but then stopped at Walmart for the rest before checking in. We wanted to pick up a supply of dry goods for our summer in Canada since groceries are cheaper here and we have plenty of room in the bed of the truck. (On one of our gas stops at a Maverik yesterday, Fran saw empty boxes folded up and asked if we could grab a few for this exact purpose.) It’s pleasantly warm here in Yakima too: 33C / 92F and still sunny.
We arrived at our hotel in Selah, just outside Yakima ($120) and here we have a really nicely decorated large homey feeling room: 2 double beds (means more pillows and towels!), desk, fridge, microwave, indoor pool and Wi-Fi. Around six we walked next door to a Japanese Teriyaki place and got some dinner to take back to the room.
Thursday, we didn’t have as long of a drive but had to be in Bellevue (outside Seattle) for an appointment with Doug’s ocularist to get his eye polished so we were not in a huge rush to leave. This gave us a leisurely morning despite waking up early – the sun comes up before 5am these days! We were glad we were headed west because once we got on the I90, the eastbound traffic was backed up for at least 5 km / 3 miles due to construction – crazy for an upcoming holiday weekend.
We arrived at the ocularist’s office a bit early and Doug’s 1:30 appointment started a bit late and seemed longer than usual but we got back in the truck and the GPS told us an expected arrival time of 3:20 at our hotel in Bellingham. (It was only a 136km / 85 mi drive after all.) Well, the traffic gods laughed in our faces and we arrived at 5:20 – traffic the I405 going north was slow but even worse once we met up with the I5 northbound. It felt so much worse to us having not been in bad traffic in over a year. There is NO HOV lane unless you have a “Flex pass” so we had to crawl along with everyone else despite there being 2 of us in the vehicle. Doug read there’d been an accident up ahead but we saw no sign of one and we hit bad traffic twice more after that point. Crazy!
Did you know that tonight, July 3rd is the day that the earth is at its most distant point from the sun – 152,000,000 km away! This is called Aphelion.
Before checking in we picked up some dinner at Subway and upon arrival at the hotel we went to soak in the hot tub to de-stress some. We were up on the early side on Friday to make our reserved 9am ferry sailing to Vancouver not knowing if we would hit Fourth of July traffic, slow downs at the border or what. First setback was being a holiday Costco Gas wasn’t open until 7 so Doug found gas along the route and we filled up – even though gas here in Washington is not cheap, it’s more expensive in BC – like 35¢ a litre more than Ontario!
Crossing the border into Canada, there was no line up in the Nexus line but we were asked many more questions than usual by the border patrol agent. Nothing we couldn’t answer but maybe she was lonely since so few people are crossing the border these days.
Happy Fourth of July:
If you click here you can view all the pics from our drive northbound.
