Magically MIrrored Salt Flats in Bonnieville, Utah

 Wendover, Utah, sits on the Nevada state line right next to West Wendover, Nevada.  It is the closest town with hotels to the Bonnieville Salt Flats.  Once we got checked into the hotel and had dinner, Bruce took off for the casinos in Nevada, and I doubled back to the speedway to see what their condition was.  I had heard they were flooded and was hoping for that mirrored sheen that is so frequently advertised in Bolivia at those other salt flats (Uyuni) but that also exists in Bonnieville in the rainy season.  We had been to Bonnieville a few years before while they were dry.  I wanted to see them wet, though.  Plus, I was hoping to meet up with a friend here and spend a couple of days.  That didn't happen, so we decided to only spend the night and do sunrise pictures.  The sun was setting over the mountains, not hitting the flats well at all when we drove by, but I wanted to check them out to see what conditions were.

Going to the speedway, there were multiple signs talking about how soft the ground was, warning cars to stay on the pavement.  Once you got to the actual speedway, there were concrete and metal barriers put out with a big sign:

We know people don't listen, though.  Often, that's me that doesn't listen, but even I have more sense than to drive out on the flooded ground!

I was wondering how they would get a tow truck out there to rescue these guys.  Tracked vehicles make sense!

I talked to the guys when they came back.  They said it wsan't worth the cost of the tow to drive out there.  The view wasn't any better out there than off the asphalt, and the tow was expensive af.

I'll start with some of my favorite pics of the salt flats when they were dry.  We drove out on the speedway when they were dry.  The sun was still coming up.  It was late morning on a cloudy day.  A very otherwordly look.

This is the flats off the speedway, like the area where the van above got stuck.  It's been churned up by people going out on the wet time and causing all these ridges.

We woke up bright and early to catch the sunrise  To the west, you could see the moon along with the purple and pink hues.  Vibrant yellows and oranges were to the east.  The salt so close to the surface of the water works like a mirror, with many people calling these the "two skies" of Bonnieville.

Oranges started replacing the pinks to whte west as the sun rose higher and the moon continued to set.

Unfortunately, with all the rain that has fallen this year, the flats were too flooded to get the mirrored walking shots that they share of the Uyuni flats.  The flats have to be wet, but the water can't be deep enough to make appreciable waves.  For the sunrise shots, nobody was touching the water so it would continue to lie flat over the salt.  When a guy decided to throw a pebble, though, it ruined it until the ripples stopped.  We'll just have to go back to the flats another time in the wet season to get the effect I'm looking for.  I've seen pictures of the same effect side by side with the Uyuni pictures, so I know it's there.   Since there was no need to wait for higher sun, we headed on toward home.

It always surprises me to see these wildlife bridges in northern Nevada.  I commented about having only seen them in this area.  Then, there was one outside Seattle over I-90 around the Snoqualmie Pass.  I don't think it's new, but I've never noticed it before.

We stopped by the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation area just outside of Boise, Idaho.  The park is way out in the middle of nowhere.  We saw a few raptors coming in, possibly prairie falcons, and some really pretty magpies, crows, and other smaller birds.  We stopped at the Dedication Point Overlook, where the Prairie Falcon are supposed to be nesting.  They appear to be planting a lot of trees right now.

The overlook of the Snake River is beautiful, but we didn't see any signs of Prairie Falcon or anything other than crows.

We drove around (including places we didn't have any business being, given the shape of the roads, but they weren't flooded), and finally went down to the Swan Falls Picnic Area.  It was cold, so we didn't even think of hiking back to the falls.  We did go to the dam.  The Swan Falls dam is one of the dams on the Snake River that is believed to be contributing to the decline of the sockeye salmon population.  These dams function as a total barrier to the salmon returning upriver to spawn.  There was apparently an attempt at this dam to build a method for the salmon to pass, but it did not work, so other dams, both up and down river, were built without even attempting to accomodate the salmon.  It's a beautiful area, though, and not a bad drive from Puyallup, just a day's drive each way.  We may go back and plan to spend a few days just hanging out and waiting for the raptors.

After spending the night outside Boise, we finally made it home to the Pacific Northwest for the summer.  

Overnight in Cheyenne for Four Days

From North Platte, Nebraska, our next destination was Evanston, Wyoming, where we had an appointment to tour the Union Pacific roundhouse.  Since we finished the Golden Spike Tower and Bailey Yard early in the afternoon, we decided to head toward Evanston to cut back on the number of hours we needed to drive the following day.  A little before supper time, we reached Cheyenne and decided that would be a good place to stop for the evening.  So we got checked into our hotel and went to the diner across the street for dinner.  I don't recommend that diner.  The food didn't taste bad.  In fact, it was so bland, it really didn't taste like anything.  The diner had a very homey atmosphere, though, and the conversation was centered around the weather.  Apparently, Cheyenne is often very windy, and the interstates will often close to high-profile vehicles because of that wind.  There was a trucker in the diner talking about how he hoped they would reopen I-25 before the blizzard hit so he could get home.

Wait!  Blizzard?  What blizzard?  We still had about six hours to get to Evanston.  Unlike the rest of our stops, the roundhouse is not generally open to the public and tours are by pre-arranged appointment only.  We determined when to leave based on when I could get the tour of this roundhouse (and existing doctor appointments in Washington).  It was only a chance of a blizzard, so maybe it wouldn't come, but it was expected to hit overnight.  We decided to get a good night's sleep and see what happened overnight.  We did not want to get stuck in weather with no opportunity hotels around.

We woke to a dry parking lot outside our hotel room window.  Turned on the TV, and the blizzard hit north and west of us.  Not northwest, but it hit on both the west and north.  Cheyenne was in a little southeast corner of Wyoming that didn't get anything.  I found the Wyoming Department of Transportation website and learned what rolling interstate closures are.  Apparently, when interstates are closed for weather, hotels start filling up (duh).  To prevent having people with no place to stay overnight, they close interstates on the way to the weather closure based on hotel occupancy.  We could have gone to Laramie, about an hour down the road.  Interstate 80, the road we were going to travel, was closed for weather at some point on a mountain.  Rolling closures had come as far as Laramie.  So, we extended our hotel stay in Cheyenne for two more nights.  Since there wasn't anything on the ground in town at that point, we decided to take a spin around Cheyenne and see the sights. The lady at the hotel front desk suggested that we start at the Cheyenne Depot Museum.

For the capital and the largest city in the state, I was surprised at how small Cheyenne is.  I knew Wyoming was the most sparsely populated state in the continental US, but for the most populous city in the state to have just over 65,000 people was mind blowing to me!  Especially considering that it is also the home of the state fairgrounds and one of the largest rodeos in the world, a major stop in the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) circuit.

Driving into town, it had that really small town vibe.  This is Lincolnway, the main street through town.

Between the second and third lights in that picture, on the right, is the town square and Depot Museum.  Bruce decided to take the opportunity of sparce population to try his hand at satchel rustling!

 

The city launched a fund raiser where they had artists decorate large boots that were scattered around the city. After they were completed, they were auctioned off to different businesses.  They started with 18 boots, 9 of them in and around the Depot Museum and square.

The store behind these boots is one of the oldest stores and one of the oldest buildings in town.  These boots aren't quite that big.  This is only a camera perspective that makes the boot look so much bigger than the rest of the surroundigns.  I did it by accident, so don't ask me to recreate it or teach anyone how.  A shot for better size perspective is here.

The Depot Museum is an old building previously owned and used by the Union Pacific Railroad and released to the city when they stopped using it.  Inside, we learned that there is a tourist trolley that drives you around the city to show you all the sites.  It is not a hop on/hop off bus, but a fixed tour of the city.  It takes 90 minutes, but don't let that fool you.  It doubles back multiple times and stops for pictures and to give information.  Cheyenne has a rich history, even beyond that depicted in the spaghetti westerns.  If you're in the area, it's definitely worth a stop.

Wyoming was the first US territory to give women the right to vote.  This is a mural commemorating women's sufferage.  The models were all current members of the community.

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This is the home of the woman who led the charge for women's sufferage and who cast the second women's vote in the territory.  A woman in Laramie voted a few hours earlier.   After securing the vote for women, Esther Morris was named the first woman justice of the peace.  Her first act was, supposedly, to have her husband arrested and jailed for the equivalent of drunk and disorderly.  The home is currently inhabited, so you cannot tour it.

The state capitol building sports a gold dome because it is an original capitol location.  It's open for tours, and apparently, you can see the opening of the tunnel from the capitol building to the old train depot and a picture of the legislators that had to be taped back together because it was torn and almost destroyed in a shoot out between political parties many years ago.  At one point, the state was considering moving the capitol to Caspar, but that never happened.  There are multiple reasons given for not moving it, but some believe at least part of that reason includes that they would lose the ability to use the gold dome if they move the capitol from Cheyenne to any other city.

This statue of Chris LeDoux stands outside the state fairgrounds where Frontier Days is held every summer.  He is sculpted riding Steamboat, a horse that is best known for his inability for anyone to ride him.  Steamboat is also the horse depicted on the Wyoming license plate.  The population of Cheyenne exceeds 200,000 during Frontier Days.  They give a free pancake breakfast, and they take great pride in getting people in and out of a like that stretches pretty much all the way throgh town quickly.  They say you don't stand in line more than 30 minutes.  It's been a long time since I've been to a rodeo, but I remember them to be really fun!

This statue of Lane Frost stands behind the fairgrounds.  He is depicted on Takin' Care of Business, the bull that killed him after a great ride in 1989.  He rode for the required eight seconds with a high point count (85).  He dismounted in the mud and fell face down.  The bull turned and pressed his horn into Frost's back.  The bull didn't gore him, but he broke ribs.  Frost was able to stand and wave for help, but then collapsed.  When he fell the second time, the broken ribs punctured his heart, killing him almost instantly.  He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

This is Ol' Sadie.  One of the largest steam locomotives.  She's across the street from the Lane Frost statue, behind the Frontier Days fairgrounds.  Big Boy, the largest locomotive in the world is not part of the trolley tour, and Bruce wasn't inclined to drive over to see if it was visible from the street.  We were expecting snow at any time, and he didn't have a winter coat handy.

We spent the rest of the day at the hotel waiting for the snow to start.  It arrived in the evening, and we woke to this.

By the time the snowfall was over, this was the cumulative numbers in inches.  Look at that 35.7 inches in Caspar with 48 inches on the mountain!  We were in Cheyenne and needed to go through Laramie and Rock Springs.  They didn't give the snowfall on Elk Mountain or Patrick Draw, but that was the last part of the interstate that opened.

After four nights in Cheyenne, the interstates finally opened up all the way through Utah.  I had emailed the roundhouse and cancelled our tour, and we headed out.  The road wasn't bad leaving Cheyenne, where we only got 6.4 inches of snow.  I got to see how those snow break fences work, though1

The roads close to Cheyenne were clear enough that we were able to stop for the next two kitschy stops.  First is the tree in the rock, which is actually in the median of the interstate.

Next was this huge head of President Lincoln in a rest stop just outside of Laramie.

They're hard to see, but this field was full of pronghorn antelope.

It was so cold outside that the windshield washer froze.  What little bit was still liquid in the tank froze on the windshield.

When they say there it blowing snow, they aren't kidding!  This wasn't just blowing from the side of the road, but you could see the snow blowing off the mountains.

Even though the interstates opened in the late afternoon, we were warned to stay the extra night to avoid the idiots who decided they needed to make up the time they lost while the roads were closed.  There are a variety of vehicles that didn't stay between the ditches.

Some couldn't even stay upright.

This group of elk were digging through the snow for some food.  While it was my turn to drive, there was a stag that had dug himself out a spot by the road.  He as laying down just watching the traffic.  My passenger was sleeping, though.  That is, until a small herd of pronghorn decided to cross the interstate and I had to stop quickly.  He still didn't get any pictures, though!

This is the rest area at Patrick Draw.  I think this is a little more than 15 inches!  The snow plow had been through there, but that was cut out from the standing snow, it wsn't snow that had been pushed to the side.  It was fluffy and that deep all the way back, just below my shoulders.

We finally got out of most of the snow in Salt Lake City, where we stopped for a visit to the Great Salt Lake before making Wendover and the Bonnieville area around dinner time.

Cranes, Trains, and Flying Automobiles!

Pulling out of Lincoln on I-80, it didn't take long to find the first kitschy thing to see - the largest covered wagon in the world.  It has been a few different businesses over time, including a gas station with a campground around it.  It also used to have wheels and windows and a caretaker.  Over time, it has fallen into disrepair.  Wonder how long it will remain.

We left the Gulf Coast little earlier than we had initially planned, which was a good thing.  Serendipitously, we caught the tail-end of the Sandhill Crane migration through Nebraska.  I have always loved the Sandhill Cranes, even when they serenaded me in the early mornings in Florida with their "dinosaur" sounds.  But I have never seen so many in one place!  I know I saw more cranes driving through Nebraska in one day than I saw in all the years we lived in Florida, cumulatively, even if you count every crane sighting as an individual bird (which I know they were not!)  Some were doing their little mating dance, and many were flying in.  Corn fields were full of them, along the interstate and the backroads.  Kearny, NE, says they get the highest concentration of them in the world, and that is the location of the Audubon Rowe Sanctuary, which I missed in my reading while planning this route.  I saw so many beautiful birds (not just Sandhill Cranes) through this stretch of the drive.  If we come through this route again, I'll definitely want to spend a day at some of the bird sanctuaries or reserves.   I spent years trying to get good pictures of birds in flight.  Thanks to having a group of birders and excellent guides on the Antarctic cruise, I now know how to do it.  Still practicing and need a longer reaching lens, but it's coming along!

We swung off the interstate in Grand Island to see Fred's Flying Circus.  Fred is no longer with us, but when he was alive, he liked to spend his free time restoring old cars into cartoon characters and raising them on tall poles so they were in the air and could be seen over the walls of his garage.  Upon his death, his family have kept the garage going, including maintaining his "flying circus".  It's really a neat stop.  We were there on a Sunday, when the garage was closed.  I don't think they do any tours when they're open.  From what I understand, everything there is to see is easily viewed from outside the walls.

This is the only one that was on the ground.  It was great they way the back end is sticking out and the painting on the wall just comes right off of it.

The town was fully decorated with the little blue pinwheels in recognition of April being Child Abuse Prevention Month.  The pinwheel signifies the good childhood every child deserves.  This has always been an issue close to my heart and one that I've spent many years working within.  It felt good to see a town mark it so visibly.  I only hope their policies and actions in the courts and administrative offices also reflect this.  Far too often, the courts and government agencies exacerbate the problem.  But, I'll get off my soapbox - for now.

Another unique thing about Nebraska is that they have a museum that is housed inside an arc over the interstate.  The museum is an old western history museum, and having grown up on spaghetti westerns that my dad watched ALL the time, I wasn't really into it.  They had a nice looking trail and some shadow bison.  It was too cold to hike, but I'll probably build time for that if we come through this way again.  Might even go into the museum.  It's a nice building and grounds, though.

The fire fighters museum on the way back onto the interstate had the fire dog "R. Hero" ouside.  He was adorable!

Back on the road, we finally made it to North Platte, where we just had to check out the trading post, where they have a "tourist trap" on bold display!

They had a little miniature museum of the wild west show

And the exhibit I always love - a "please touch" section with lots of pelts!  I was expecting the badger to be softer, but the skunk was cuddly soft!

I don't remember what my offense was, but I'm sure it was pretty bad!  Thankfully, Bruce had bail money.  I usually like to gather new jams, jellies, syrups, or similar items in my travels.  This time, the bail money went on moonshine jelly and Gramma Mazie's Toe Jam (a blend of tangerine, orange, and elderberry).  I haven't tried it yet.  Waiting for my new blood sugar medications before I ingest that much processed sugar!  My numbers have been higher since I got back from Patagonia, so I'm trying to be better-ish.  

We finally made it to today's final destination - the Golden Spike Tower in North Platte.  The Golden Spike Tower sits as an overlook to Bailey Yard, the largest train yard in the world.  It covers 2850 acres and manages an average of 14,000 rail cars every 24 hours.  It has 17 receiving tracks and 16 departure tracks with two “humps”used for sorting the cars.  When a train comes in, it passes over either the east or west hump, depending on the direction it is traveling.  The hump is built up so that it is higher than the rest of the tracks.  On the hump, a worker scans the car to determine its final destination.  They then switch the tracks so that car (or cars if several in a row are going to the same destination) roll down off the hump, down the track, and onto the track designated for that final destination.  At a designated time, a locomotive will back up into a particular track and attach itself to the cars for that destination.  Most of the time, the locomotive will be going to either another sorting yard or multiple destinations, so once it picks up the rail cars for one destination, it may pull forward and back into another line of cars to attach those.  It can do this for multiple destinations.  I found this yard fascinating.  There is a movie to give a broad overview on the ground floor, and then you go to the 7th or 8th floor for viewing.  The 7th floor is open air, so there is no glass.  The 8th floor has docents that will explain what you are watching.  I strongly suggest spending some time with the docent.  Ours wanted to make sure we understood that a locomotive was not an engine.  Instead, the locomotive moves the train using electricity generated by the engine.  If you ask me, it's a distinction without much of a difference since the engine appears to be housed inside the locomotive, but he had a lot of other knowledge, and the day wouldn't likely have been nearly as pleasant without the information he imparted to us.

There is a little wooden train scultpure in the courtyard with an arc of flags of the 13 states that are serviced by this train yard.

It's a long way down from the 8th floor

The golden spike was not laid in North Platte, Nebraska.  The tracks came together in Promontory, Utah, where the Golden Spike National Historic Park is.  This was named the Golden Spike Tower, however, because it was architecturally supposed to resemble the golden spikes that were used to unite the eastern and western sections of the tracks.  The word "resemble" is used in its loosest terms.  But one of the golden spikes from that uniting is housed in the tower on the 8th floor.

In this video, you can see the cars separating and going different ways from the hump

In this video, you can see the tanker reaching the line of other cars going to its particular destination with enough force to couple with the cars already waiting.

It was still early in the day when we finished the Golden Spike Tower, and our next planned stop was on the other side of Wyoming - the United Pacific round house in Evanston, Wyoming.  So we drove on down the road, stopping for the night in Cheyenne, Wyoming.