There ought to be a law against starting vacations at 6 AM on a Saturday morning; it’s hard to be enthusiastic about anything at that hour in the morning. But when you’re traveling on free plane tickets, your options are often somewhat limited; so my son David and I arrived at LaGuardia at the ungodly hour of 5 AM, in order to make sure we’d get through security and arrive at the gate on time.

And thus begins a reprise of a 4,000 mile driving trip that we took five years ago; see “Travels With David,” elsewhere on my web site for details. This one is starting in Denver, where we’ll pick up a car and drive some 500+ miles west to Salt Lake City to say hi to my Dad. Then we head north, from the bottom to the top of Idaho, and on into Canada. Our plan is to end up in the Banff-Lake Louise area for a few days, and then circle back towards Denver again.

It’s interesting to see how much has changed in the five years since our last driving trip. That trip took place in a more innocent age: June, 2001, almost exactly three months before the September 11th terrorist attacks. Last time, we drove our own car — a bright yellow VW named “Daisy.” This time, we’ve got a rented convertible — shown here.

Also, the last trip involved a carefully-planned selection of music to be played as we drove — and the music consisted of several dozen CD albums. This time, we brought a gadget that transmits music from an iPod into the speakers of the car; and David thus has literally thousands of musical selections that he can take from a device that fits in his pocket… The music itself was all different, too — different songs, different bands, none of which I recognized. But David was kind enough to include a few of my old favorites: Tom Petty and Johnny Cash were among today’s selections, and we’ll see what he has in store for the rest of the trip.

Anyway, we both fell sound asleep on the over-sold flight from New York to Denver; staggered awake and collected our baggage and took the shuttle down to the Hertz pickup location. Stowed the baggage, checked to make sure we were capable of pushing a single button that made the convertible top magically disappear, and then headed west.

For the first fifty miles, especially from the airport through Denver proper, we stayed on Interstate 70. But not too long after entering the mountains, we took an exit and got onto Colorado highway 40: a reasonably wide highway, but one that follows the curves and contours of the mountains, rather than blasting through in a straight line as the Interstates do. We drove through several ski resorts — Winter Park, Tabermash, and Hot Sulphur Springs — all basically deserted, now that ski season is over. (One of the odd consequences of ski resorts in this area is the presence of Starbucks coffee-shops every five miles or so along the highway.)

We stopped in Kremmling for lunch, and found (to our disappointment) that the only reasonable place to eat was a Subway sandwich shop. However, the town has compensated for its mediocre food with imaginative little posters: while we were waiting in line for our sandwiches, I noticed a sign on the wall that said “Moeing lons: $15″, written by an erudite gentleman who wanted to make sure everyone knew that he “owns moer.”

Suitably fortified, we headed on, through largely empty — but quite picturesque — mountain scenery, towards Steamboat Springs. Twenty or thirty miles before arriving there, we started noticing bright yellow signs along the highway, announcing our impending arrival at the F.M. Light & Sons western clothing store. We couldn’t resist the temptation: we stopped at the store, picked out a couple of cowboy hats, and took down the convertible top before driving on towards Craig.

It’s hard to describe the scenery we’ve seen today: it would have required stopping every few miles to take some pictures, and neither of us really have the patience for that. Suffice it to say that’s still early spring out here, especially at high altitudes like Berthoud Pass (11,315 feet above sea level) and Rabbit Ears Pass (elevation 9,426 feet). The snow is very low on the mountains, sometimes all the way down to the highway; and the trees are just beginning to bloom, so most of the hillsides are a very pale green.

After stopping for a quick snack in Craig, we kept driving west. David fell asleep for a while as we passed through Maybell, Elk Springs, and Massadona; I woke him up as we drove into the bustling little town of Dinosaur (population 319), so he could see the intersection of Brontosaurus Avenue and Stegosaurus Avenue.

From Dinosaur, we crossed the state line into Utah; and then it was across the Green River, and another 30-odd miles to Vernal, where we picked one of the three or four Best Western hotels. It’s located at 251 East Main Street, and I recommend that you not stay there if you happen to pass through Vernal. The phone system was broken, so I couldn’t make outgoing long distance calls; and while there was a working bathtub, the shower mechanism didn’t work. Actually, I’m beginning to wonder if the whole town is cursed: something is crazy about the cell-phone service, because all attempts to dial phone numbers in other parts of the country connect me to a random local number in the 801 (Utah) area code.

But at least there’s good Wi-Fi access to the Internet; and we found a decent restaurant to enjoy a steak dinner. David has now gone off to sleep, and I’m about to do the same; we’ll head for Salt Lake City tomorrow…