EAST OF ALLEN

Early Saturday morning, June 25, 2022, we headed out from Pasadena on our bucket list road trip to the Field of Dreams in Iowa.  Our first night’s stop would be Cedar City, Utah, which according to google maps was 430 miles away and a 6-hour ten-minute drive.  

 

We were sailing along on the 210 east when, big surprise, we hit traffic.  What better way to depict our first travel day than California freeway traffic!  The jam here is going over the Cajon Pass down into Victorville.     

 

Aside from the traffic, our trip through the California desert was uneventful. Oh yeah, Barstow has a new Dutch Bros.  And I got a BOGO deal on shoes at the outlets there.  Regrettably the rest stop near Baker was closed.

As we left California we followed this Ram truck, which according to its rear window is part of the exodus of Californians to other states.  Unlike the Ram, we would be returning to our home state, we just didn’t know exactly when.

Going over the Colorado River, we saw the water level was low. We knew that the next day, we would see the River again as we headed into the Rocky Mountains.  But, first, we had to cross southern Nevada, a nice bit of Arizona and a huge chunk of Utah.

Cedar City is home to the Utah Shakespeare Festival.  We had tickets for opening night of King Lear and, due to traffic delays, we just made the 8 PM curtain.  The photo above was taken outside the open-air Englestad Shakespeare Theatre, which is part of a three-stage complex at Southern Utah University.  The setting is beautiful, and I think both of us would gladly return. The rendition of King Lear was very good. But the actors all wore Covid-era masks, which severely detracted from the performance.

There are plenty of hotels near the university and we stayed at Baymont hotel on South Main Street.  It is a nondescript almost clean place in walking distance of the Shakespeare Festival.

More important, it was also in walking distance of our morning coffee find — the Bristlecone at 67 West Center Street.  Bristlecone is in the middle of an interesting older downtown and it was fun to walk the streets.  Kind of a mix of coffee shop, restaurant, cool place and yoga studio, Bristlecone served up uncommonly good coffee, had healthy breakfast options and engaging friendly staff.  It was a great way to start the day. We sat outside to plan our day’s trip but wound up playing Jenga and cornhole.  Bristlecone is highly recommended.