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This was just a long, long day. There was some climbing, but not a lot. Mostly, it was just long and flat and straight and hot. Breakfast was at 5:30 Mountain time, or 4:30 Pacific time. In any case, it was before sunrise. Luggage load was held back to 6:10, because that was sunrise. That's how early we were up. The state line was really disappointing. Dan said there was a sign, but we never saw it. Instead, there was just this line painted across the road. To our backs was West Wendover, Nevada, with casinos and hotels. To our front was Wendover, Utah, with parking lots for the casinos, cheap food, cheap motels, and pretty much nothing else. A few miles down the road are the Bonneville Salt Flats and the Bonneville Raceway, where things go fast, far, and in a straight line. The second picture is looking back at Wendover. A few miles further down the road is this god-awful piece of public art called "Metaphor - The Tree of Utah." Quoting from a postcard: "Located 26 miles east of Wendover, Utah on the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats, standing 87 feet above the salty plain, is this creation by Karl Momen. Dedicated January 18, 1986 as 'A hymn to our universe who's [sic] glory and dimension is beyond all myth and imagination.'" As we used to say in college, it must be art - it can't be anything else. Western Utah isn't all salt flats. No, there are some hills and scrubby bushes and dry grass. And then the salt flats resume. I-80 is built on a causeway through the salt flats, to raise it about two feet above the seasonal lake bottom. At this time of year, parts were dry, but parts were wet. The lunch stop was at the Skull Valley Cafe, a diner in a double-wide trailer. At the time we were there, it was a one-woman operation, but she was everything you could want from a diner waitress/cook. The local NBC affiliate tracked us down there, because they wanted to do a piece on Dan and his bionic leg, the major parts of which were manufactured in Salt Lake City. While he was doing the stand-up interview, I found a half-grown kitten (with a bad case of ear mites, alas), and gave it a week's worth of loving. No pictures, unfortunately. The TV crew wanted footage of us eating lunch, footage of Dan filling his Camelbak, footage of us biking out, and footage of us on I-80. They ran the van down the road, jumped out, got some footage, jumped back in, ran a couple miles down the road, and repeated the whole process about 3 times. In all, it took over an hour to get lunch, and get back on the road. This was edited down to a one-minute piece on the 10:00 news. Shortly after the TV crew left, Dan sagged out. He fell back from Andy and me, and toodled along for about 8 miles before the sag van caught up with him. I felt really gassy and bloated, but I kept going. (I think Bruce is right about the french fries - not good road food.) Andy didn't mind, because it meant that I was fighting to keep up with him, not the other way around.
I'm starting to get a really uneven tan. Since we're primarily heading due east, and the sun is primarily to the south, especially at the most intense part of the day, I'm getting noticably more color on the right side than the left. I'm going to have to turn around, and go back Nevada, just to even things out. |
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People were dropping like flies today. A couple people sagged all the
way through, a few people sagged from the beginning to one of the sag
stops, and a lot of people had to be picked up off the road. Jay was
taken to the hospital with dehydration, and Michael was taken to the
hospital with heat stroke. The desert is not your friend. We got in
at 5pm, having started a bit before 7am, and Sandy, Linda, and Kevin
limped in after us.
Finally got off I-80. We were well into the nasty fast bits of the
approaches to the city, and I would have liked to get off about 5
miles earlier. On the other hand, once we got off, we were on a long,
dreary frontage road for 10 miles. Bruce warned us it would be
longest 10 miles of our lives.