Sunday July 9th 2017

I was out of the RV earlier than normal this morning. I went to the nearby McDonalds for breakfast. All of the tourists in town seem to have had the same idea. The place was a mob scene. It was also a “newfangled” store that had eliminated all but one cashier position in favor of the self service kiosks. In this instance I prefer to deal with a human.

After breakfast I got on Interstate 80 heading east. My goal was to find out what was on the other side of the salt flats. The basic answer is “not much”. Once you’ve completed the 40 mile drive across the flat white expanse, the road starts to climb over a ridge line. The mountains are mostly rocks with a few grassy areas. I traveled for another 40 plus miles before I reached the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake and the first real signs of civilization. I’m not sure what I expected of the lake, but it wasn’t anything spectacular. It was just lots of water with some white stuff that I assume was salt on the edges.

Soon after I passed the Great Salt Lake, I arrived at the Salt Lake City airport and then the actual city. The transition from nothing to built up area is very quick. Since I’ll be staying in the area at the end of the month, I turned around and headed back toward Wendover. I’ll have time to tour the city when I’m staying near the airport.

Blossoms near the ground on a pink rose bush at the RV park.

On the way back to Wendover I had time to think about the original travelers to the west. When I was in the Twin Falls Idaho area, I learned that the Oregon trail went across southern Idaho on the south side of the Snake River. That area would have been open desert with lots of sage brush on gently rolling terrain in the mid 1800s. The first emigrants to California at the start of the gold rush angled southwest off the Oregon trail in the Twin Falls Idaho area. All of this avoided the Great Salt Lake and the salt flats to the west of the lake. It’s hard to imagine the type of character an explorer would need to find a route through the mountains, deserts and areas like the salt flats. The idea of starting out across the salt flat on foot knowing the water on the flat was undrinkable takes a particular kind of guts. I’ve read that at the peak of the gold rush emigrants were crossing the salt flats, so somebody must have blazed the trail.

The next group of people to wonder about are the surveyors that laid out the railroads across the area and later the roads. They manage to find ways through the mountains with minimum grades. This often requires the route to wander miles north or south of the main east west path they are negotiating. It’s the surveyors that solve the riddle created as you travel across the flat of a valley toward a solid wall of mountains. They determine which way the road will turn to find the pass through the mountains.

Back in Wendover this afternoon I stopped at a casino to make my daily donation. However, I was luckier than the casino today. I left with a little more money than I started with. My next stop was at the Smith’s grocery store for a rotisserie chicken for dinner back at the RV.