The latest installment is about salt. It’s hard to talk about northern Utah without eventually turning our attention to salt.
The vast white expanse on the left half of this satellite image is a gigantic salt patch. This forms the Great Salt Lake Desert. The smaller greenish-blue area in the upper-right is the salt water of the Great Salt Lake itself. Both are the remnants of ancient Lake Bonneville which used to cover this entire area. Much of it drained away in a single massive, cataclysmic flood about 14,000 years ago.
I am presently in an endorheic watershed, a part of the Great Basin. Water drains to no ocean or sea within this vast bowl. It is trapped without an outlet. Water carries trace minerals from slowly eroding rocky hillsides and then evaporates within the basin. Eventually only the salt remains as it collects over millennia.
Bonneville Salt Flats
The wife and kids decided to take a pass on this journey. I left Ogden at 5:30 am in the dark. I was awed as I turned the corner along the southern edge of the Great Salt Lake, and watched the sun rise over Interstate 80. The ridges before me illuminated in vibrant yellows and reds. There are no towns of much significance out here on the 120 mile stretch between Salt Lake City and Wendover. I had the road to myself, in a world of contemplative silence. To me, these are perfect driving conditions.
Speed
Brownish desert grasses gave way to streaks of salt and finally to the starkly white and barren Bonneville Salt Flats themselves. A ghostly blanket stretched to the base of mountains on the far horizon. I might mistake it for a fresh snowfall if I hadn’t know better.
Random vehicle tracks diverged from the highway into the horizon of the flats. No doubt, people who wished to test how high their speedometers could climb left those behind. Some of the most unimaginable automotive speeds anywhere have taken place right here at the Bonneville Speedway on absolutely level terrain. In 1970, the Blue Flame hit a speed of 630.388 mph (1014.513 km/h) at this spot. Naturally I remained on the highway, thank you.
Unfinished Business
Then I crossed the border into Nevada because I wanted to visit the only place in Nevada that legally recognizes Mountain Time: Wendover. I paid a quick visit to the Wendover Will statue, turned around and headed back home. This also allowed me to record my first trip to one tiny corner of 17,203 square mile Elko County, Nevada. It is larger than several of the smaller states in the eastern U.S., but much less densely populated. That crossing will fill in a nice chunk of geography when I find the time to update my county counting map.
I returned a little after 10:30 am, just as the rest of the household was getting ready for the remainder of our day’s adventures.
Great Salt Lake
So I rested for about a half-hour and we ventured over to Antelope Island State Park.
Antelope Island is the largest island in the Great Salt Lake, a mountainous backbone jutting from the surface of the shallow lake. A 7 mile (11 km) causeway connected the island to the mainland, a fun drive in itself. However, watch out for the seagulls! They seem perplexed by passing automobiles and we had a number of close calls.
There are many activities on the island including driving tours, hiking, bird watching, taking in the spectacular views, and searching for the antelope for which the island was named (we spotted several). It also includes a significant bison herd. Unfortunately it’s a large island and they must have been grazing on the other side when we visited. We never saw any.
Beach
The public beaches are another popular feature. Here visitors can conduct personal tests about the buoyancy of excessive salinity. It does seem to hold true. The kids bobbed like corks.
However, you won’t want to swim here if you have an aversion to flies. Notice the part of the video where I walk along the beach as swarms of flies move away from me in waves. They’re harmless but they may be a bit disconcerting to those with bug phobias. The waters are also filled with brine shrimp. My older son caught one and wanted to keep it as a “pet” but I said he couldn’t unless he found a matching trident and crown. Apparently he’s not attuned to sea monkeys as a cultural icon because the joke went completely over his head. I guess you had to grow up in the 1970’s to understand.
Ranch
A road led far down the east side of the island to the Fielding Garr Ranch. This had been a privately-held working ranch from the earliest days of the Utah Territory until 1981. Then the state purchased the ranch to convert the entirety of Antelope Island into a public park. The isolation must have been intense even with the major cities of Utah clearly in view just across the salty water.
I wrote a lot more about Antelope Island on my permanent site if you’d like to see more.
An Observation
Friends seemed rather amused when we chose Utah as a summertime holiday destination. They could understand winter (skiing) but summer? I think they wrote it off as yet another one of my unusual vacation choices. On the other hand, I’ve noticed a high percentage of European visitors at the many places we’ve stopped at during the trip including the Golden Spike site and the Great Salt Lake. I ask the European 12MC audience: is this a cowboy and “Wild West” fascination? Many people in the U.S. seem to take this area for granted, which is unfortunate. They don’t know what they’re missing.
The Utah tourism council should feel free to send me that endorsement check now.
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