That’s U-ta-ha, to my mother. Not that I want to make fun of my mother, but I think it’s funny the way she pronounces Utah. I have my Sweetie pronouncing it this way now also. Ha!

Sweetie flew into California late on the night of Thursday July 5. I drove to Oakland and met him near the ATA luggage carousel, where we waited for his suitcase to appear. We stood around the carousel, and I thought “Wow, that must have been a big plane!” There were so many people. Then, the incomprehensible airport-loudspeaker-voice came on and many people shuffled from our carousel to the adjoining one. I think she mumbled something about JetBlue being moved. So we waited. And waited. And waited. Then, the flight number on the carousel changed and muffle-voice said something about “All the bags have been loaded onto the carousel.” Of course, I could not figure out what muffle-voice was saying. But a man standing next to me said that all the Maui bags were out, and now the airport folks were loading bags from a Honolulu flight. I felt bad for my poor Sweetie. His bag never appeared! But when I walked over to him, I realized that there was a crowd of people grumbling. It was not just Sweetie’s bag that had not appeared. There were many Maui travelers with no bags. Muffle-voice, in the guise of a real human woman, left the baggage area to check it out. More bags came out and Honolulu people left the airport. The real live human woman returned, disappeared back into the ATA office, and muffle-voice reappeared to tell us something about “Sorry for the inconvenience. Mmppfff. ......fffmmmmppphhh....phhmmmff....”

Finally, over an hour after arriving at the luggage carousel, sometime around midnight, the darn thing spit out Sweetie’s suitcase and we left Oakland International, which is certainly doing nothing to lift itself from the status of “My least-favorite-airport-ever.”

We managed to squeeze in some wedding stuff on Friday. We met with a DJ in the morning. Then we tried to look for invitations, but my brain fried after a couple of hours of this task. Then! we had the fun task of starting a gift registry. I wish we had more time to spend on that. But we were masters of efficiency, I have to say. Partly because Sweetie and I have very similar tastes when it comes to the overall look and feel of household things. We are both looking for comfortable, down-to-earth stuff that is just a little notch above regular quality stuff. So, we love things like soft bathroom towels in greens or blues. But really, who doesn’t?

And Saturday morning, we were off! The trek to Utah began with a drive to Sweetie’s aunt and uncle’s house where I dumped my car off and we stuffed the trunk of their car full of bags. We were armed with music mixes ala Sweetie that included Bill Cosby, Garrison Keilor, and Genesis (the band, not the Bible book). His aunt and uncle had books on tape AND - how cool is this - old radio episodes of The Shadow from the 1930s and 40s.

“Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?"

"The Shadow knows....... muuuhhahahahahaha!”

Yes, we had the makings of a good road trip.

I sometimes think, if I was from Nevada, I’d be a little jealous of California’s topography. California has most everything - the low desert spots of Death Valley, the high of Mt. Whitney, the beauty of the Sierras, a coastline full of rugged hills and sandy beaches, and (where I grew up) acres and acres and acres of cropland. Orchards of almonds and pistachios, rows of grapes and artichokes, fields of hay and grazing land.

We drove on Interstate 80 through the foothills and past North Lake Tahoe and forests of pine trees. Sure, Nevada the state shares Lake Tahoe with California. But that doesn't last very long. Then we hit Reno and drove past it and across the high desert. And that’s what so much of Nevada is. High desert. Reno sits around 4,400 feet or so. It’s dry, and it seems like it only gets drier the further you go into Nevada. We drove all the way across and saw almost half a dozen wildfires burning in Nevada. There was lots of smoke. And, in two spots, the fires were big enough and close enough to the freeway that we saw the flames quite clearly. It was not a good week for fires in the west. There is beauty in the rugged peaks of Nevada’s mountains/mesas. But it looks so arid and empty, driving across it. Miles and miles of dust and sagebrush. A person can only take so much sagebrush before her eyes start to cross in her head. Or until her eyelids droop, and the enticing narration of the book-on-tape (can I call a CD a book-on-tape?) becomes as garbled as the Oakland airport loudspeaker muffle.

And so there I was, head jerking and lolling in the backseat as we wended our way to Wendover, Utah. Did you know there is a Wendover Nevada and a Wendover Utah? And did you know that Wendover Utah is in the Mountain Time zone, which is one hour ahead of the Pacific Time zone, where we had driven from? And did you know that, sometimes, the digital alarm clocks in hotel rooms in Wendover Utah are not set to Mountain, but to Pacific time? hmmmm.....