The Great Salt Lake to the Casinos

Water, water, everywhere; but not a drop to drink! This is not one of those optical illusions. We left Salt Lake City, UT and headed towards Reno, NV on the fifth day of driving with the U-haul. Today was going to be a very interesting drive. We were heading through the salt flats and along the edge of The Great Salt Lake (above).

Surprisingly, they actually mine the lake for salt. I think we both thought this was somewhat of a protected lake, but this is not the case. This is the Morton's factory at the lake below and its' bounty of salt in massive mounds; waiting to be processed and bagged/bottled/boxed for sale.

One of the odd sights was the stone phrases along both sides of I-80 from the Great Salt Lake all the way to the state line.

What's strange about this is that there are no stones visible as far as you can see; except for what people brought out here to spell out what was on their minds. Names, couples, we even saw complete sentences spelled out in rocks. Some of these were there so long, they were actually under water along the road side from rain collecting in the lower areas along the highway.

No, we didn't try to leave our mark, but we did see this, which was pretty darn close.

Then, this strange tree appeared in the distance...



It is known as "Metaphor: The Tree of Utah" or the Tree of Life. "




This is not tourist-friendly as there is nowhere to stop and lots of signs saying "emergency parking only", so I tried to snap some quick shots and we drove by.




Then we hit the brightest, whitest part of the Salt Flats. You can see the crystals sparkling in the sunlight; like shards of broken glass. Really cool to see... and no, that is not snow, it is all salt.






In Wendover, Utah is the world famous Bonneville Salt Flats, the site of numerous land speed records. The races are held every year over Labor Day Weekend. Drivers who reach over 200 mph receive a hat letting everyone know they did it.



We took the exit and pulled in. There was a gas station selling racing fuel (for about $9.50 a gallon) at the exit. We started down the road, but realized that the actual track was WAY off the road. Since we had a U-Haul towing a trailer and getting about 8 MPG so far, we decided that it was not worth the time or the gas to see if it was even open to the public. So we turned around at the first intersection and continued along I-80 in search of the next landmark.

Then we crossed into Nevada!

Nevada gave us probably the biggest scare of the trip. We had a bit of a collision on this leg...

This is.... well... was a genuine Nevada tumbleweed! These are actually bushes that grow in a round shape and eventually die off, lose their roots and get blown away by the winds. They are not a collection of weeds that form in a snowball effect. When it came out onto the road, we both felt the sharp pain in our chests and gasped.... then THUD! Michael said all he saw in the mirror was fragments of tumbleweed. We took this picture about 100 miles up the road when we stopped for gas. The branches were really dense and barbed, which made for fun trying to pull it out of the radiators.

Due to rain and three stops for gas, we chose to stop in Sparks, NV for dinner at an Applebee's. After dinner, Michael said he was done with driving for the day. We didn't make California like we hoped we would. We found a place in Sparks for the night. Here is our route for today....