Saturday Summary - Week 28 - May 9–15 - Gas Station Naan, Heart-Shaped Behinds & Too Damn Hot

Denver, CO (70s) → Loveland, CO (30s) → Manila, UT/WY (70’s) → Salt Lake City, UT (90’s) → Bonneville Salt Flats, UT (90’s) → Winnemucca, NV (80’s)

Wyoming, Sort Of

We pulled away from Boyd Lake State Park, ready to see a new state. We were in Colorado a loooooong time! We enjoyed its many National Parks: Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and Rocky Mountain; as well as so many memorable spots: Montrose, Loveland, Denver, and Colorado Springs. But it was time to move on. Except… we were only passing through Wyoming. We drove I-80 through Cheyenne and kept on rolling;  long drive day, no stops. Well, almost no stops.

We had lunch at The Punjabi, at the Akal Travel Center off I-80. A tiny family-owned restaurant tucked inside a gas station, churning out incredible tandoori chicken, garlic naan, and more. We were amazed. So dang good. I would never have expected such good Indian food at a gas station.

The tip came from, of all people, the Nevada wildlife ranger at the Wyoming border inspection station. Yes, inspection station.

As we approached the border, we kept seeing signs stating that ALL watercraft (including paddlecraft) must stop for inspection. We were hesitant, but being rule followers, we stopped. Turns out they were checking for zebra mussels. The Colorado River, where we last used the kayaks, has them, and they can live for over two weeks on a kayak if it stays moist. Our kayaks were very dry and passed their DNA tests, but we still had them sprayed down. Unwanted delay, annoying, yes, but we did the right thing. We got our ticket proving we stopped and were approved. And we got the Indian restaurant tip out of it, so I'll call it a win.

Wyoming's changing landscape fascinated us the whole drive. I am genuinely looking forward to returning to Wyoming "for real" and spending some real time there.

Our Saturday overnight was at Lucerne Campground, which has a Manila, WY address but is technically in Utah; a little peninsula whose tip is in one state and the rest in another, which is kinda weird and kind of wonderful. The Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area did not disappoint. Our site had amazing views of the Green River reservoir,  honestly, the second-best campsite views of this entire trip. (First place still belongs to Capitol Reef, where we stayed on BLM land with those jaw-dropping canyon views stretching out in front of us.)

This was also our third Green River touchpoint of the trip: spotting it from a lookout in Canyonlands, kayaking it at Green River State Park, and now watching it from above at Flaming Gorge. The dam itself is a concrete thin-arch dam that forms a reservoir stretching 91 miles into southern Wyoming, submerging four distinct gorges. It's a major piece of the Colorado River Storage Project; the whole region is deeply connected to that river system, and we keep finding ourselves coming back to it. The bathroom situation in our loop (Loop F) was… not ideal. The bathrooms in Loop D were working, and only the showers in Loop B. But we had all of Loop F to ourselves, and those views were a fantastic trade-off.

Lucky hung out close to us off-leash; there was nothing nearby she could disturb, until the Pronghorns showed up. There was, of course, zero chance she was catching them. I learned later they're the fastest mammals in the Americas, running up to 60 mph. Their little puffy, heart-shaped behinds bouncing around as they ran was my favorite part. Absolutely delightful. A couple of times, they snorted at us, which felt a little intimidating, honestly. (I didn't take this photo!) Sunday was Mother's Day, and I had a long, lovely Zoom call with Henry and Hanna. I really do have the bestest kids in the world. They are independent, so supportive of each other, and they keep in touch with us. They call, they text, they let us into their lives. They tell us what's going on, and we support each other. They are there for us as much as we're there for them. I don't know what we did right to have these two amazing humans, but I love every chance I get to catch up with them.

Salt Lake City & The Bonneville Salt Flats

After the call with our kiddos, we headed to Salt Lake City a night early; a smart move to break up what would have been a long driving stretch. We found a Harvest Host brewery right off the highway, perfect for a quick overnight. Lucky was welcomed on the terrace, the weather started hot but cooled into the evening, and we reminisced about our time here with Henry and Hanna. We even passed the Olympic Park in Park City that we visited with them back in 2016. A nice little trip down memory lane. The brewery didn't serve food, so Don walked over to a nearby Del Taco. It's a Southwest taco chain. It was just a Taco Bell by another name. Nothing special.

The drive from Flaming Gorge to Salt Lake was one of those drives where you just keep saying, "Dang, that is amazing." From the vivid red-and-orange canyon walls of Flaming Gorge dropping into blue-green water, through the wide, spare Uinta Basin, through narrow canyon country, and finally into the broad Salt Lake Valley with the Great Salt Lake shimmering pale and flat in the distance and the Wasatch Range rising sharply to the east. We kept taking photos because we couldn't believe all of this existed within a three-hour drive. It's one of the more geologically varied stretches in the American West,  easily five or six distinct landscapes in roughly 300 miles.

Monday brought the Bonneville Salt Flats. One of Earth's most distinctive landforms, about 12 miles long and 5 miles wide, is composed mostly of sodium chloride. Plain old table salt. Many world land speed records have been set here, including a barrier-breaking 406.60 mph. I love this quote from Monte Widdison of the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association: "the last bastion of high-end amateur racing in the world." There's something poetic about that.

On the drive out, we passed at least two giant salt factories. Mountains of salt, literally, ready to be packed by Morton and shipped all over the world. Morton operates a major solar sea salt facility in Grantsville, just west of Salt Lake City, harvesting salt directly from the Great Salt Lake and producing somewhere between 1,600 and 2,700 tons per day. Between 600,000 and one million tons per year are pulled from the area around the lake. No tours, unfortunately, but it would make a fascinating one.

We overnighted at Silver Island Mountains, right off I-80 on the road toward the race track. Beautiful spot where we flew the drone,  but it was HOT. Full heat wave. Are you getting this? I was in Loveland during a May freeze less than a week earlier, and here I was sweating through a Utah heat wave. This trip is truly made up of extremes. We would have been more impressed by the Salt Flats had we not already visited Badwater Basin in Death Valley. And the drive from Salt Lake City passes so much salt flat land that by the time we reached the actual race track, it's a little… underwhelming. We still had fun taking photos. But we were supposed to stay two nights and left after one. Too dang hot. We escaped to a park in West Wendover in the morning, the shade alone dropped the temperature a solid 10 degrees, and then pushed on to Winnemucca.

Winnemucca — Nevada's Friendliest Town

When I first saw this name on the map while planning, I thought: That is a memorable name. Then I learned its tagline, “Nevada's Friendliest Town,”  and decided this had to be one of our stops. The name itself has deep roots. Winnemucca is named after a prominent Northern Paiute leader, Chief Winnemucca, who was known for his efforts to maintain peaceful relations between his people and the settlers moving through the region in the 19th century. His daughter, Sarah Winnemucca, became one of the most significant Native American activists and writers of her era, advocating tirelessly for the rights of the Paiute people. She wrote a book that I intend to find and add to my road trip book list “Life Among the Piutes”.  The name has stayed on this landscape, a reminder of the people who were here long before I-80 was a thought.

The town also has surprisingly strong Basque roots. In the late 1800s, Basque immigrants from the Pyrenees region of Spain and France came to the American West as sheepherders, and many settled throughout Nevada, with Winnemucca among the most notable communities. The Basque culture left a lasting mark: their boarding houses, called ostatuak, became social hubs for the community, and Basque restaurants serving family-style meals became a tradition in the region that persists today. We had planned to try one, but one was a big Trump supporter (a big no for me!), and the other too expensive given our current budget concerns. We ended up at a fun, lively Mexican restaurant instead. It was a lot of fun and more to our speed. In reality, there isn't much to Winnemucca, but honestly, that was fine. Our three nights were just nice for stopping, breathing, and not driving anywhere. I rode my bike to "downtown" (essentially a 10-block radius)  and out to the W Mountain trailhead. I didn't go further. Electric road bike, not a mountain bike, ha. I painted my Paint by Numbers (still not done!!!), did more embroidery, and started listening to audiobooks in German to dust off my vocabulary. We had three consecutive no-spend days. We need more of those. The trip has gotten more expensive than we budgeted, and the quiet days help.

Up next: Camvio visits and returns to California.