A somewhat traumatic day

Everything started out well today. I woke up just before the alarm went off and got up to begin preparing to depart for Salt Lake City.

I fed everyone and took Tag for a walk... then Noah and I had breakfast. La Quinta is awesome by the way. SO pet friendly and free continental breakfast all for less than $100 a night!

When packing up the cats, Bangs was more grouchy than he has been the past couple days. He growled at NNK a lot and was pulling on the crate door trying to get out. I was hoping that wouldn't be a sign of things to come.

We got on the road a little past 7. Today we drove around 8 and a half hours to get from Reno to Salt Lake. Until further notice, our in-drive entertainment will be "The Silmarillion" complete and unabridged, written by J.R.R. Tolkein and read by Martin Shaw. Tag chose to sleep through it all.



Bangs and NNK received their tranquilizers as planned. I don't think the 1/4 tab has any effect on NNK, by the way... so we may not use it at all tomorrow and see how that goes... although we may use it anyhow.

About 2 hours into the trip, we were coming along a broad valley in Nevada. It was rainy off and on all morning. We could see a storm coming up a few miles away. Noah saw lightning a couple times. I was looking back at animals in the car both times and missed it. Oh well.

A few minutes passed and it started raining VERY hard. Noah turned on the wipers and we continued on. Just as we were passing a big rig cab that was hauling 3 other big rig cabs, things took a turn for the worse. The rain became hail that was piling up like snow on the road and we began to hydroplane. My life flashed before my eyes. The cats lives flashed before my eyes... Noah handled the whole thing very expertly and thank god we didn't slide off the road or careen into the big rig cab driving next to us. A minute after we regained control we drove out of the weather and the roads cleared up. Needless to say, we were a little shaken up by the whole event.

Around 4 hours I took over driving and Noah took some pictures.







I'd been driving about an hour when Bangs started rattling his cage and getting testy. We pulled over and I re-administered tranquilizers. Before we reached the next exit, Bangs had pooed all over himself and NNK. She did NOT appreciate this.

(side note: last time we moved across country we had the exact same issue with Bangs on the first day of driving)

We pulled off at the next exit and cleaned up on the side of the road.

Finally we were back in business. Bangs's tranquilizer kicked in and he slept the rest of the way there. And there was hardly a peep from NNK, who was not too keen on getting shoved back into the crate with Mr. Poopy.

The Great Salt Lake Desert is pretty interesting. It was pretty intensely dusty and my allergies kicked in even with medicine!







It's hot here in Salt Lake. And hazy. And dry. I don't really like it. But we're getting the hotel living routine down now... and we found a park to take Tag out to run around in.

We had greek food for dinner. And we're all relaxing.









It's another long day tomorrow... hopefully we're done with drama for this trip!