This week’s topic for #SundayStills is Roads, paths, and streets.

Before I continue, I’d like to say I enjoyed reading Terri’s posts about her road trip. It’s always fun and interesting to see my home state through another blogger’s perspective and, oh yes, I remember that big snow storm on March 26. It left nearly a foot of snow in both my front and back yard overnight. Not only it took me over an hour to clean up my driveway and sidewalk but it also had me worry sick (like a parent) about my poor seedlings out there in the garden despite all were under two layers of frost cloth.

Now, back to roads…

Is it weird for me to say I really enjoy the challenge of maneuvering curvy roads like this one where you must slow to a crawl at a speed of 15 mile/hour to navigate this curve. I find the most rewarding part is taking a photo of the road I’ve just successfully driven through. Standing at the top of the pass was like having just been injected with a powerful dose of dopamine, like I’m floating on cloud 9. Did I really just drive that road?

This is a section of Highway 12, located in central Utah. I spent 3 days exploring these 100+ amazing miles back in 2021. This was the most difficult section of the highway even though the photo doesn’t look it.

There were S-curves, U-curves, curves with steep slopes, you name it. It was like a driving course with the instructor throwing the entire bag of tricks at the driver but if I have to drive this again, I would say yes to that. Perhaps if I do a couple times, this difficult road will be as easy as pie.

I really wish I had taken a picture of the most difficult part of this curve but I was still a pretty inexperience photographer back then. This is Mirror Lake Highway 150 in the eastern corner of Utah, about 50 miles from Evanston, Wyoming.

That was my first visit to Mirror Lake. It was the summer of 2017, I was working at a job I hated, so I was constantly having anger issues and when I’m angry, I apparently like to challenge myself with difficult-to-navigate roads. Right before I arrived at Mirror Lake, which is a lake at 10,000 feet elevation, I must navigate a double S-curve with probably a 30-45 degree slope before reaching the peak and dropping back down at nearly the same slope to reach the entrance to the lake.

I visited the lake one additional time in 2019. Mom tried to drive this road last year and couldn’t do it. She couldn’t get pass the section where there’s nothing on right except for cliff.

Finally, here’s a road I wish I’ve driven. It’s Icefield Parkway – the highway between Banff and Jasper National Park in Canada. My aunt drove this leg of our trip to see the Canadian Rockies in 2017. She navigated this road a total of 4 times over the course of two days and don’t be fooled by the straightness of the road. To get to where I took this picture, there was a figure-8 curve involved.