Featured Picture – In downtown Salt Lake City, the architects of the Wells Fargo building created a very cool optical illusion by making it look like the entire building was as thin as a credit card. (that’s Tom in the bottom right)
From South Lake Tahoe, our first stop on the way home was Elko, Nevada. We felt a little sad, but were also happy to know that further adventures likely await us. What awaited us in Elko was a tidy, pretty mid-town family run hotel for less than a small truck-tank full of gas and a really tasty Italian dinner at a restaurant within easy walking distance.
We had a good night’s sleep and ate breakfast at another unexpectedly good café/restaurant just across the street from our hotel.
We hit the road after breakfast and enjoyed a relatively short ride to Salt Lake City (~230 miles) on a flat straight highway surrounded by mountains. In some places you can see that the engineers cut right thru the mountains to allow the highway to pass through.
We drove through the Bonneville Salt Flats where land speed records are made by road rockets. We stopped at the only eastward bound rest-stop in the flats. You could both taste and smell the salt in the air. It made the hot air seem moist. Next to the highway we could see tire tracks in the salt and then areas where vehicles had crushed thru into the wet mud below-obviously the attempts of amateur drivers. The signs at the rest-stop warn against non-professionals driving onto the flats.
The highway was so flat and straight for such a long stretch, there were multiple caution signs warning drivers against drowsiness and not to doze off. There was also a measured mile section of the highway setup to check the accuracy of your speedometer. You set your cruise control on 80 mph a half mile before the beginning of this stretch and start a stopwatch (on your phone) when you pass the sign to begin the test. When you get to the sign designating the end of the measured mile, exactly 45 seconds should have elapsed on the stopwatch. Our speedometer was dead on.
Salt Lake City, as we approached, appeared like a handful of shiny jewels held in the palm of the mountains. Its sky-scrapers shown in the sun with a back-drop of cloudless blue sky.
Our hotel was large and appeared new and skirted one edge of downtown. We walked into the downtown area which appeared clean, with multi-laned streets, lots of new construction and renovation/repurposing of older buildings.
Intra-city trains and many bicycle and scooter stands provided alternatives to driving or walking. There were numerous clubs, restaurants, hotels, and stores. There was also a large homeless presence. We visited Pioneer Park, a pretty, grassy, shady area and saw multiple large groupings of homeless folks. We noted a police officer in relaxed conversation with one such group – hopefully he is one of the community resource officers assigned to hook needy folks up with shelter, medical and other services. We have these officers in St. Augustine, and they make a great deal of difference for the homeless population in our city.
Tonight, we had dinner at a great steakhouse called Spencer’s. It was within walking distance, and we ate too much as is becoming a bad habit. We totaled about 4 miles walking today, which probably covered less than half of the calories in the chocolate flourless cake Paula had for dessert! Tomorrow we will cross the Continental Divide and plan to stop in Laramie, Wyoming.