Being recent transplants from the East Coast, we are constantly experiencing new and different aspects of life out West.
One of the first lessons we learned during our drive out here is that a road is a road is a road . . . except when it's not.
The distance from Greenwich, Conn., to Utah is about 2,500 miles. Chicago is a 12-hour drive, or about a third of the way, and that was our destination the first night we began our journey west.
After that, the plan was to take our time and see some sights, but as we left Chicago early the next morning, we both just "smelled the barn" and wanted to get the drive over with.
Our intention was to make it somewhere in Wyoming and stop for the night. We were each driving a car. I had books on tape to keep me going, my husband Grit had pretzels, and we were chasing the sun.
Before we knew it we were at Little America in Wyoming and still raring to go, and excited to see our family who were all in Utah waiting for us.
By 1 a.m. we were bleary-eyed and weary. Just outside Park City I thought I saw a blinking road sign that said something about a canyon. I disregarded it because Grit, who was ahead of me, had passed it by, and he doesn't miss much.
It was then we learned the importance of looking carefully at the portable blinking road signs, even though they are difficult to read when you're barreling down a highway. And if you can't read it, pull over and wait till it flips back and forth to be sure you get the information.
Blissfully ignorant, we continued through Heber — passing another flashing sign before heading down Provo Canyon. As I drove, I was imagining the feel of the new sheets our daughter-in-law Stacy had kindly put on our new king-size bed, when to my dismay, I saw Grit pull over by the flashing lights of police cars blocking the canyon.
Was this a nightmare?
Actually it was a "middle-of-the-nightmare" nine miles from our destination. The canyon was closed at the dam for road repair until 6 a.m.
There were six or seven other cars sitting there with stunned drivers, and we had passed many others returning to Heber while we were driving down, so we weren't the only ones confused by the signs. (We joke now that it was a ploy between the highway department and the Heber motels to fill them up.)
Lesson learned.
That isn't the only adjustment we have had to make to our driving habits. After years of being on winding tree-lined streets in Connecticut, it is hard to get used to Utah's wide expanses — there is just so much sky and space, one can feel a bit "untethered." (A young woman from Utah who moved to the East felt exactly the opposite, because in Connecticut she missed the panorama and felt claustrophobic.)
Mastering the common center left-turn lanes when you are not used to them can prove tricky — roundabouts I am used to but not the turn lanes.
One day I was looking intently for a store I knew to be on my left, and when I finally spotted it, I pulled into the turning lane only to find another car coming at me not too far ahead. Scared me to death!
One real plus to driving in the West is it's pretty hard to get lost with the mountains as east and west markers. Because the towns are set up on a grid, starting with Center Street, even the winding subdivisions can be navigated fairly easily with the street number.
Back in Connecticut only someone without good sense would head off, especially at night, without a map in the car. The street signs are generally hard to see or hidden by foliage, and the street numbers only have bearing to that street — they give no direction designations. Without a map it is possible to get dreadfully lost winding and circling around, especially in the back country.
Yet, even after enduring the ultimate embarrassment of missing five questions on an open-book test for a driver's license (I still passed), I find Utah a great place to live.
The stars shine brighter, the air is easier to breathe — and I know that I need to read the blinking signs.
Life is good.
E-mail: sasyoung2@aol.com