*Note before yelling at us for doing something wrong* We did NOT see the sign that said to not go on the Salt Flats if there’s ever any standing water. There were a lot of cars when we got to the parking lot, and the tiny wooden sign with the piece of paper nailed to it completely slipped our notice. I am the one yelling at people to stay on trails at national parks. I follow signs religiously. I read all the signs that I can find because I love facts and history and information! We did get pulled over by a cop and were given warnings, along with all the other cars driving around on the salt flats either knowingly or unknowingly. It was very kind of the officer to just give us warnings, because for all he knew we were lying through our teeth about not seeing the sign. Which we weren’t. I can spot an owl in the dark from three hundred yards away. I don’t ignore the kiosk (I’d barely call it that) just because. Although, if someone who somehow has any control of this ever reads this, it would be nice to have better barriers and a PERMANENT, large sign that says to not drive on the Salt Flats when there is water. That would not be difficult. I will even design it for you.
End rant.
Ahem.
We’ve been talking about going to the Salt Flats for years. Colton has never been before, but my extended family used to go when I was younger. We’d set off small rockets and chase them on four-wheelers. Super red-neck and super awesomely fun. On Saturday we had nothing to do, so decided spur-of-the-moment to take a long drive. It’s about an hour and a half away from where we live, so we packed lots of snacks and hot thermoses to eat Cup Noodles if we got hungry. Because there is literally nothing out there. I mean Wendover is like ten minutes away so we could’ve gone there for food if we’d wanted to. But other than that there is nothing.
I spent the drive through the Great Salt Lake Desert reading random facts from my Utah guidebooks. I love guidebooks and paper maps. They don’t lose service, unlike our phones. To be fair, it’s truly hard to get lost on the way to the Salt Flats. There is one road: I-80. So it’s hard to miss.
We learned about how this part of the Great Basin is one of the driest. It’s truly desolate. We’ve explored lots of high desert country, where the landscape is dotted with beautiful little sagebrush and juniper bushes. But we drove through nothing but sand. Oh wait, there is ONE thing. An 87-foot-tall sculpture, built there in the 1980s by a Swedish artist named Karl Momen. Utah has lots of really random land-art in the middle of nowhere. Go look up the Spiral Jetty and the Sun Tunnels. Both cool, but both in the middle of nowhere.
We took lots of pictures of us jumping. Which was very difficult because we tried setting a timer on the camera, and neither of us ever jumped at the same time or at the right time. So most of our pictures looked like this.
But the rest of our pictures turned out great. It’s such a strange environment. It looks like snow, but it’s as hard as rock, and the surrounding mountains are also extremely barren and jagged. Also we’re having a repeat of the winter of 2015, in which we spent most of it outside in 50 degree weather. So once again we will have no water during the summer. It’s currently 60 degrees as I type this post, on the 8th of February. That is completely insane.
“Can I get on top of the car?” “Yes, but don’t stand here, here, here, here, or here. And don’t break the sunroof.” “…”
