When your brakes fail, it might as well be on a winding mountain pass with sheer drop offs and hairpin bends. Even better if it is a pass that climbs from near to sea level up to almost 3000m, before dropping back down to below 1500m. (That’s pushing 10,000′ before returning to less than 5000′ for those of you who have not gleefully embraced the metric system.)
We left with a Map. Well, OK, that isn’t entirely true. We left with a scrap of paper with the names of a couple of towns we would need to drive through written on it.
We were starting to feel like we didn’t really like the Pacific Coast of Baja. I know that sounds a bit rough, I mean we live on the Pacific Coast of New Zealand, you think we’d have a soft spot for its sister coast in Mexico. Perhaps it wasn’t that we disliked the Pacific Coast, it was just that the peace and tranquility of the Sea of Cortez side of the Peninsula was too tempting to ignore.
After spending some time driving aimlessly around Utah, we reached the conclusion that it is quite possibly another planet.
The truth is out there… although it isn’t as interesting as we’d hoped. After spending time at Burning Man and in Las Vegas we felt we had probably come as close as possible to encountering alien life forms. But that wasn’t going to stop us trying our luck on the Extraterrestrial Highway.
I suspect it is considered a crime to visit British Columbia or Alberta and not pay a visit to Jasper and Banff. Not wanting the Canadian Mounties to angrily chase us out of the country we made the detour to check out these two stunning but expensive highlights of Southwestern Canada.
As we’ve mentioned, we quite enjoyed Alaska, we didn’t want to miss our last opportunity for a visit, so we made the detour to Stewart and Hyder.
Photo Friday—The classic Kiwi road trip
Photo Friday—Snowy Sunday afternoon
Photo Friday—Horses