Bonnevlle Salt Flats and Utah

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Monday 19th October. Election Day at home, but we had done our duty and exercised our right to vote at the Advanced Poll a few days before we left. Since we couldn't do anything about the outcome at this point we decided to forget all about it and enjoy the scenery.

We had the wheels rolling by 9:35, pretty good going for us on another rainy overcast day. The I-80 is not a bad route, some ups and downs of course but the highway is in good shape. The 75 MPH speed limit kept us mostly in the right lane with most though by no means all traffic whizzing by on the left. We maintain about 60 MPH (100 Km/H) unless in heavy traffic when we try to at least keep up with the slower cars. On the long flat roads we'll bring it up to 65. 70 MPH burns a LOT of fuel!

A couple of hours later Tia needed a break so we stopped for 10 minutes at the Rest Area near Dunphy. We were pleased to find two places in the truck and RV parking area that had potable water taps and near the exit a sani dump. Very handy. We made a note in the log and continued on our way, the weather improving some what.

We crossed the Nevada Utah border and entered the Mountain Time zone where 1:55 PM suddenly became 2:55 PM.

As we crossed into Utah Art saw a speed limit sign ahead:  80 and promptly slowed from his 100 Km/H. His brain had read the 80 as Km/H rather than MPH even though our U.S. built motorhome has the MPH numbers larger and our speedometer was hovering around 60. 80 is not a posted speed we are used to seeing in the USA! We found out later Utah was one of if not the first state to raise freeway speed limits to 80 MPH.


At 3:05 PM we pulled into the Rest Area at MM 10, just at the start of the Bonneville Salt Flats for a late lunch. 

Last time we came through here the flats were dry. There must have been a lot of recent rain. The rain had been on and off though there were lots of sunny breaks. The wipers were acting up again, the “Park” position moving more and more to the outside. 

After leaving the lunch stop and approaching the end of the flats the weather began to look more 

promising.  

Though in truth when we got there, there wasn't a lot of change, let alone a pot of gold.

Just before 6:00 PM we stopped for fuel at the Flying J near Bountiful (northern outskirts of Salt Lake City) and then across the highway for the night at the Pony Express RV Resort where we have stayed several times. A nice clean resort with free (slow) wifi and laundry facilities which we declined to make use of since we were both too tired. We had enough clean clothes anyway.

By the time we arrived the wipers had parked themselves at the far outside of the windshield. This put the right hand wiper right in front of the side view mirror making visibility difficult to say the least. The brochure from the resort had several listing for RV Service and mechanical work, hopefully a phone call or two in the morning would lead to a solution of the wiper problem.

We got the wifi going well enough to see some election returns but there was no chance of streaming video so after dinner we had drink and went to bed.