Bonneville

It was cold Thursday morning when we left the Red Lion Inn in Elko, Nevada and headed east toward the Utah border.  We rode under a mostly clear sky but a stiff crosswind from the north pushed at us steadily.

Weather was heavy on my mind. In fact, this was my Facebook post that morning:

Everything to the north and west of us was wet, too.  Here is what my Garmin Pilot app was showing me for weather radar:

Marty's girlfriend Anna sent us pictures of the place that we had stayed at in Bonanza Oregon covered with an inch or more of hail!

It was clear to me there was a steady series of cold storms moving from west to east across the northern states and I wanted nothing to do with them.  And so it was that we abandoned hope of visiting the Grand Tetons or Yellowstone where the forecast called for snow.  We had already ridden through two inches of slush at La Veta Pass in Colorado on the first day and that was both painfully cold and dangerous. We re-charted a course that would take us on a more southerly route and made arrangements to stay with my college roommate in Kansas City, Missouri on Saturday night.

The ride across the Utah desert was more of the same, the freeway follows a broad valley first northeast then southeast as it avoids scaling over a ridge of barren mountains.  The last town in Nevada is Wells and there were billboards for a "pussycat ranch" (prostitution is legal in parts of Nevada) that someone had proudly emblazoned with the letters C-L-O-S-E-D rather than take it down. 

Once in Utah, we crossed the famous Bonneville Salt Flats where speed records are set by rocket cars and such.  It had an eerie beauty to it.  The sky over this broad plain were cloudless. At one point the mountains in the distant north appeared to float above the salt bed on a mirage. The Department of Transportation has come up with a smart way to get drivers to drive at the 75 mph speed limit - a five mile long speedometer calibration run is set up with signs that tell you how many seconds should have elapsed if you are holding the limit.  

We came to the Great Salt Lake with its scent of brine and large dehydration mining operations for extracting its mineral wealth.  After rolling through the city on freeways, we headed for the Big Cottonwood Canyon for an exhilarating run up to Guardsman Pass.  We posed for pictures at the top, then rolled on to Park City, Utah about five miles down the eastern slope. At Park City, we ate dinner at a brewery on Main Street.  

We decided to push on another hour or so after supper. the weather forecast looked decent - dry and no colder than 45 degrees - and to camp for the night.