Shortly after Tom’s alarm went off in our hotel room in North Platte, Nebraska at 6:00am on Monday July 7, 2025, I heard my photographer’s wife, Vicki, ask her husband what was on his agenda for the day. I nearly fell off the TV stand when he replied, “The only thing we’re going to see the entire day is six hundred and fifty miles of expressway. This will likely be the most boring day of the entire trip, and hopefully we will be in the Salt Lake City area before nightfall. The fun begins tomorrow.”
We were on the road at 7:30am and the mind-numbing ride to Utah was underway. Roughly a half-hour West of North Platte, we entered the Mountain Time Zone, which meant we gained an hour. When I heard Vicki mention we had crossed into the new time zone, the movie Groundhog Day popped into my hallow resin head. At that moment, I thought to myself, “Great – just what we need. Now we’ll have an extra hour of flat, boring Nebraska countryside to endure. I don’t think we’ll ever get through that state.”
The flat, monotonous sagebrush-filled terrain never changed when we crossed from the Cornhusker State into Southeastern Wyoming around nine o’clock. Thankfully for the three of us, our Jeep Grand Cherokee featured Sirius XM radio where some of the boredom was nullified at times by the music of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper; the crew-cut sporting giant who knows what I like. But as the miles accumulated on the odometer, even their music failed to keep me from wishing I was anywhere but in that Jeep.
“On a long and lonesome highway, West of Omaha; I listened to the radio and another Fifties song. I thought about where we’re headed or were the night before. But soon my thoughts began a-wandering, like they usually do, when you’re riding endless hours with nothing else to do. And I don’t feel much like riding; I wished this day was through. Here I am, on the road again. There I am, hard to engage. Here I go, playin’ the star again. There I go, turn the page.”
Suddenly, just as the echo from Bob Seger’s tune began to fade from my head, I heard my photographer say to his wife, “I just saw a sign for a Lincoln Monument, and I think it might be at the next exit. I can’t imagine that monument being very impressive, but let’s stop anyways. I also think there’s a rest area at that exit as well, which is great because I have to pee so badly, I feel like Secretariat after winning the Kentucky Derby.”
Sure enough, after we left I-80 and made it to the Summit Rest Area, which was located on an overlook roughly ten miles East of Laramie, Wyoming, the thirty-foot-tall granite monument dedicated in 1959 to our 16th President came into view. It turned out that most of Interstate 80, which runs from New York City to San Francisco, is known as the Lincoln Highway – even though Abraham Lincoln never stepped foot in what’s now the state of Wyoming. While that sculpture wasn’t the greatest site I’ve ever visited, it was a pleasant surprise to discover a monument dedicated to Honest Abe out in the middle of nowhere.
Following our encounter with the Great Emancipator, the rest of the seemingly endless drive through Wyoming was broken up only by a quick stop for gas and lunch in the small town of Sinclair. Shortly after lunch at a small Mexican diner called Su Casa’s, it didn’t take long before I remembered why my photographer shouldn’t eat tacos while travelling.
The terrain we’d been so anxious to see for the first few days of the trip finally transformed from mundane to jaw-dropping once we entered the Wasatch Mountain Range after crossing the Utah border. I was excited to be back in the Beehive State. After all, my first and only visit to Utah came in 2018 when Tom, Vicki, and I changed planes at the Salt Lake City International Airport on our flight home from California.
At the Echo Canyon Rest Area, during a stop along I-80 where my photographer logged-out, Tom finally made the decision on where the three of us would call “home” during our two-night stay in the Salt Lake City area. My photographer had delayed making earlier hotel reservations because he didn’t know whether or not we could make it to the area before nightfall. But thanks to Vicki’s lead foot on the gas pedal and the lack of any important sites to visit, we were a couple of hours ahead of schedule.
Their destination of choice was Ogden, which was roughly 40 miles North of Salt Lake City. Even though most of our sightseeing would be in and around Utah’s Capital City, the lodging was less expensive in Ogden. My cheap photographer also said, “If Ogden was good enough for the Osmonds, it’s good enough for the Watsons.”
When our brutal 650-mile journey ended at the Comfort Inn on the Western side of Ogden, I watched as Tom hauled our belongings to the room. Thankfully for my out-of-shape photographer, who huffed and puffed as he pushed the overflowing cart through the parking lot, I travel very lightly. As a matter of fact, the only essentials I brought with me on the trip was a roll of medical tape and a bottle of Gorilla Glue. I didn’t even bring a change of clothes – which, quite frankly, would consist of only a small bottle of paint and a brush.
Dinner in Ogden was at the Angry Goat Pub and Kitchen, which was the place where my companions first realized their meals would likely be expensive for the remainder of their time in the West. I laughed to myself when the server brought my photographer’s twenty-one-dollar meal of fish and chips to the table – the look on Tom’s fat face screamed, “This can’t be cod. These have to be two fried guppies!” He was right, the portions were very small for the price of the meal. In fact, I’ve watched my camera guy accidentally spill more food down the front of his shirt than what was on his plate.
When the three of us left the restaurant, I overheard my photographer tell his wife, “The goat wasn’t the only one angry at that place. We just spent sixty bucks on dinner and I’m walking out hungry. No wonder Donny and Marie were so thin.”
After we drove around the area for a half hour in an effort to get a better look at the picturesque mountains near Ogden, we made it back to our hotel around 7:45pm. Even though that scenic drive had calmed my photographer’s anger issues from dinner, those issues re-appeared when he noticed two school buses filled with students were in the process of unloading near the front entrance of our hotel. Then, to add fuel to his COBS-induced fire, Tom saw the signage on the side of the bus read ‘San Juan’. The last thing I heard him say before we went into the hotel was, “If those kids are up all night making noise, I’ll be calling for ICE – and I don’t mean to fill our cooler.”
Luckily for everyone involved, I didn’t hear a sound once we made it to our room where Tom placed me on the table near his bed. For the next hour or so, my photographer and I watched the movie Happy Gilmore on television before he extinguished the lights at nine o’clock.
The three of us had endured over 1,700 miles of endless cornfields, three-armed eyesores, sagebrush-filled prairies, and a bevy of lousy, inconsiderate semi-truck drivers. Thankfully the boredom was over, and in the morning, the fun was going to start. I even heard Tom mention the three of us were going to have so much fun, we’ll need plastic surgery to remove our goddam smiles. He said I would be whistling zippity-doo-dah out of my resin butt hole. To be honest, I couldn’t wait to see if he was right.
I stood alone in the darkness and wondered what Salt Lake City sites my photographer had up his sleeve – sites that made him so giddy? If I had to guess, I’d say we might visit a Presidential site; or a filming location of an epic movie; or perhaps the State Capitol Building. While the late, great Rock and Roller Meat Loaf once said “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad”, the most famous bobble head in the world topped it by saying “Three Out of Three Is Better!”
“Heroes get remembered, but legends never die!”
