The original plan for the day was to head to Preston, Idaho. Preston is where the movie Napoleon Dynamite was filmed and I thought it might be funny to see some of the places from the movie. It is only about five hours away from Ontario, Oregon so I wasn't sure what we would do for the rest of the day.
After waking up and relooking at maps and thinking about it, a last minute change of plans was made. I really wanted to see the Bonneville Salt Flats and it was in a good direction for where we are headed.
After getting ready and packing up the bike, we hit the road. Once again, temperatures were comfortable as we began to cross Idaho. The scenery is pretty, but nothing different from what we've seen the last week (or last day).
We headed south on Interstate 84. Traffic around Boise was heavy, but lite other than that. We took US93 south into Nevada. The terrain in Nevada was more desert like, but what was very surprising was the elevation.
Northern Nevada has many mountains, but the plateau that they sit on is also very high. From a distance, the mountains looked shrowded in haze. As we continued south on US93, the overall elevation rose. The highest elevation we have been through on the trip was on US93 and Interstate80 in Nevada. Once pass was just under 7000 feet.
Other than that, the Nevada Big Empty was just that.
Interstate 80 took us east to Wendover, a town bordering Utah and Nevada. Since the Nevada side has Casinos, which means expensive entertainment and cheap rooms, we got a room at the Rainbow. The room was cheaper than the room from the night before, but nicer than the more expensive room at Seaside. Even though we've passed many casinos on this trip, there is something decadent about staying in a Nevada Casino Hotel.
Once checked in we went out to the Bonneville Salt Flats. Initially we took Frontage Road, a non-maintained road. It was non-maintained and very rough, so we turned around and headed to the speed trials area.
Happily, the BUB Speed Trials were just wrapping up. We stopped for a while and talked to some of the racers and took several pictures. It was probably a zoo a day or so earlier.
The salt flats themselves are surreal. I had pictured sandy salt, but what it actually is is sticky salt and not exactly dry, with more water around than would be hoped. With rain storms in the distance, the view was pretty dramatic. People coming from the time trials were absolutely covered in salt.
Many of the time trial people were at the hotel as well. The salty footprints were evidence, but the hotel vacuumed them up very quickly. The people at the hotel were an odd mix of gearheads and gambling grandmas. To paraphrase Hunter Thompson: A motorcyclist can learn to cope with things like seeing their dead grandmother crawling up their leg with a knife in her teeth, but nobody should be asked to handle this trip. That might only make sense if you've seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a few hundred times.
On the way back to the hotel we ate at the Salt Flats Cafe. Great food at incredible prices and pictures of the salt flats racers all over the walls. Neat.
We headed back to the hotel and relaxed for a few minutes. Then we headed down to the casino to waste some money. The impossible happened and I hit big (for me) on video poker and ended up $50 ahead. I lost $20 of that, but was happy to stop ahead. The buffet dinner was better than average and we called it a day early.
Mileage for the day was 397.3.
Post Script: After finishing this, the casino ploy to only have crappy tv stations worked and I lost another five clams to the gamble deamon. We did get heavy rain overnight though helping to wash bonneville salt off the bike.
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