Blog Day 25 – Winnemucca, NV, to Provo, UT
We tried to get an early start this morning: We were on the road by 9, which for us, on this trip, is early. Especially since the kids are still wanting to sleep much later than that.
Not ten minutes into our trip, we had to pull over so Clare could throw up. We didn’t stop quite in time. So then we spent the next 20 minutes wiping everything down in the back seat. This is not the first time this has happened with Clare; it IS the first time we haven’t been able to contain it. I’m starting to figure out her MO: If we have to wake her up in the morning and then stuff her into the car before her breakfast has settled, there’s a good chance we’re going to have problems a few miles down the road. So now there’s a garbage bag with some messy clothes and Clare’s car seat cover festering in the Thule, and we have to figure out what to do with it.
I can honestly say there’s not much going on in Nevada. We were still in the state by lunchtime, and we looked in vain for somewhere to pull over. A check of the roadmap confirmed there was a rest area some 40 miles up ahead, so we held out for that; it turned out to be a toilet shack and a picnic table set on a concrete slab on top of a windswept mountain pass. Natalie’s words: “This is the freakiest rest stop I’ve ever seen.” We kept going, and finally stopped at a park in West Wendover, which is on the Utah border and right on the edge of this long, perfectly straight stretch of I-80 that goes through the Bonneville Salt Flats, near a military testing ground. It’s a vast, eerie, desolate landscape – nothing but gray salt stretching to some barren, dusty mountains way in the distance. This may seem improbable considering the stretch of Nevada we had just driven through, but there is even less going on in this part of Utah.
Farther down the road, we got off the interstate to take a dip in the Great Salt Lake. We followed signs for beach access, and parked in a big gravel parking lot next to a nearly abandoned old boardwalk building (“Saltair” – check it out on Wikipedia), and were surprised to see only about a dozen people on the entire beach, which must stretch for at least a mile. It was 90 degrees outside, and I couldn’t figure out why there weren’t more people cooling off lakeside. Turns out, the word “beach” in the “beach access” sign is used loosely, because there is no sand; it’s more like a dried-out mud flat leading down to the water. With each step, swarms of tiny gnats rose up from the dirt. It was unpleasant, but we made it to the lake and waded out into the warm water. Keith and Natalie even floated in the extremely salty water, and when they dried off, their skin was as dried and salty as potato chips; we could chip the salt off with our fingernails.
This morning we had designs on getting all the way to Arches National Park, near Moab, tonight. But that would have meant putting in almost 600 miles today. Shortly after we got on the road, we knew we couldn’t make that, so we checked the map and found a state park on the creatively named Utah Lake, literally steps from downtown Provo, and that’s where we are tonight.
At first glance, the state park looked more like a boat launch parking lot. But after we settled in we realized that it is actually quite nice. The campground has its own private area, and each site has its own permanent picnic table shelter -- a nice touch, considering there’s not any other shade save for a few stands of cottonwood trees. We have a spacious site – the most room we’ve had so far. (Other campgrounds have been a bit cramped, and we’ve had to get creative with the placement of our tent.) Even better, this is the warmest afternoon we’ve had since we left Indiana. The campground host said the temps should get down into the 50s tonight, which is downright balmy compared to the cold we endured in Yellowstone. So we’ve left the rainfly off the tent, and we can see right out the top and gaze at the stars.
So we were settling in nicely here and starting to think this is one of the nicest campgrounds we’ve been in so far … until dusk when, as I was cleaning up after dinner, mayflies in hordes as thick as mud fell out of the sky. They attacked relentlessly, got stuck in my throat, flew down my shirt and staged a mass suicide by the hundreds in my dishwater. They stuck themselves to the wet, soapy dishes and I wasn’t able to shake them all off before putting the plates away. Yuck! It’ll be interesting to see the aftermath in the morning. As I type, here in the Teardrop, there are dozens of them on the outside of the screen, drawn to the glow of the computer.
We finally figured out that if we turn off all the lights in the camp, the swarms kind of dissipate. Keith put the kids to bed in the tent while I finished the dishes in the dark. When I was done, I sat by the glowing coals of the fire and roasted what may be the World’s Best Toasted Marshmallow, all perfectly crisp on the outside and warm and oozing on the inside. Then I sat back and listened to Keith, in the tent, make up a story about trolls and garden gnomes, while I watched the enormous, full moon rise over the campground, and over the mountains in the distance, all hazy and shadowy in the twilight.
We tried to get an early start this morning: We were on the road by 9, which for us, on this trip, is early. Especially since the kids are still wanting to sleep much later than that.
Not ten minutes into our trip, we had to pull over so Clare could throw up. We didn’t stop quite in time. So then we spent the next 20 minutes wiping everything down in the back seat. This is not the first time this has happened with Clare; it IS the first time we haven’t been able to contain it. I’m starting to figure out her MO: If we have to wake her up in the morning and then stuff her into the car before her breakfast has settled, there’s a good chance we’re going to have problems a few miles down the road. So now there’s a garbage bag with some messy clothes and Clare’s car seat cover festering in the Thule, and we have to figure out what to do with it.
I can honestly say there’s not much going on in Nevada. We were still in the state by lunchtime, and we looked in vain for somewhere to pull over. A check of the roadmap confirmed there was a rest area some 40 miles up ahead, so we held out for that; it turned out to be a toilet shack and a picnic table set on a concrete slab on top of a windswept mountain pass. Natalie’s words: “This is the freakiest rest stop I’ve ever seen.” We kept going, and finally stopped at a park in West Wendover, which is on the Utah border and right on the edge of this long, perfectly straight stretch of I-80 that goes through the Bonneville Salt Flats, near a military testing ground. It’s a vast, eerie, desolate landscape – nothing but gray salt stretching to some barren, dusty mountains way in the distance. This may seem improbable considering the stretch of Nevada we had just driven through, but there is even less going on in this part of Utah.
Farther down the road, we got off the interstate to take a dip in the Great Salt Lake. We followed signs for beach access, and parked in a big gravel parking lot next to a nearly abandoned old boardwalk building (“Saltair” – check it out on Wikipedia), and were surprised to see only about a dozen people on the entire beach, which must stretch for at least a mile. It was 90 degrees outside, and I couldn’t figure out why there weren’t more people cooling off lakeside. Turns out, the word “beach” in the “beach access” sign is used loosely, because there is no sand; it’s more like a dried-out mud flat leading down to the water. With each step, swarms of tiny gnats rose up from the dirt. It was unpleasant, but we made it to the lake and waded out into the warm water. Keith and Natalie even floated in the extremely salty water, and when they dried off, their skin was as dried and salty as potato chips; we could chip the salt off with our fingernails.
This morning we had designs on getting all the way to Arches National Park, near Moab, tonight. But that would have meant putting in almost 600 miles today. Shortly after we got on the road, we knew we couldn’t make that, so we checked the map and found a state park on the creatively named Utah Lake, literally steps from downtown Provo, and that’s where we are tonight.
At first glance, the state park looked more like a boat launch parking lot. But after we settled in we realized that it is actually quite nice. The campground has its own private area, and each site has its own permanent picnic table shelter -- a nice touch, considering there’s not any other shade save for a few stands of cottonwood trees. We have a spacious site – the most room we’ve had so far. (Other campgrounds have been a bit cramped, and we’ve had to get creative with the placement of our tent.) Even better, this is the warmest afternoon we’ve had since we left Indiana. The campground host said the temps should get down into the 50s tonight, which is downright balmy compared to the cold we endured in Yellowstone. So we’ve left the rainfly off the tent, and we can see right out the top and gaze at the stars.
So we were settling in nicely here and starting to think this is one of the nicest campgrounds we’ve been in so far … until dusk when, as I was cleaning up after dinner, mayflies in hordes as thick as mud fell out of the sky. They attacked relentlessly, got stuck in my throat, flew down my shirt and staged a mass suicide by the hundreds in my dishwater. They stuck themselves to the wet, soapy dishes and I wasn’t able to shake them all off before putting the plates away. Yuck! It’ll be interesting to see the aftermath in the morning. As I type, here in the Teardrop, there are dozens of them on the outside of the screen, drawn to the glow of the computer.
We finally figured out that if we turn off all the lights in the camp, the swarms kind of dissipate. Keith put the kids to bed in the tent while I finished the dishes in the dark. When I was done, I sat by the glowing coals of the fire and roasted what may be the World’s Best Toasted Marshmallow, all perfectly crisp on the outside and warm and oozing on the inside. Then I sat back and listened to Keith, in the tent, make up a story about trolls and garden gnomes, while I watched the enormous, full moon rise over the campground, and over the mountains in the distance, all hazy and shadowy in the twilight.
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