Finished Nebraska, through Wyoming & Utah, into Nevada

 

At Little America in Wyoming

Our first night at Cabela's was beyond interesting.  Around 11:40 I heard water running. Thinking it is a broken water line, I open the door and realize they are watering the lawn...but one sprinkler is broken and shooting water sky-high just in front of our motorhome.  Ok, all is well except now Indy wants out...so her and I go out and get wet, she does her stuff and we get wet coming back in.  All is well...until around 2 am when the SKIES opened up.  For nearly 30 minutes it rained and rained and rained, with lightening and thunder and winds.  Fortunately the National Radar showed no warnings, and sure enough it passed without incident.  The second night was fine...although the lawn was again watered (along with the roadway where the broken sprinkler's water landed.

We were up by 6 am and hit the road within 20 minutes.  Even then the sun was being blocked out by the smoke from the western fires.

Looking west, you can see the smoke off in the distance, despite the rain the area got 36 hours earlier.

Very quickly we were entering Wyoming.  We zipped through Cheyenne, and we had already gained 2,000 feet in elevation from Sidney.  My plan was to stop for breakfast at the Rest Area between Cheyenne and Laramie. 

At 8,640 feet in Elevation it is the highest spot along I-80...higher than Donor Summit which is only 7,239 feet!  

This part of the Interstate is linked up with US Highway 30, which is the Lincoln Highway...so they have this wonderful monument of Lincoln at this rest are.

After a quick breakfast, we hit the road again.   Wyoming is full of hills, rocks, ranches, weeds and sagebrush.

At another rest area we saw these two guys (the gal stayed with the truck) working with this dog on these large boulders.  Marcia thought they might be training the dog, and sure enough they were...but neither of us thought about taking a picture of them working with the dog...our bad.  Anyway, the dog is on its way to Utah to get more training, and then it is going to Africa where it will work to track down and fight elephant poachers.

 These four pictures above were taken around Rock Springs and Green River.

By 2 pm we reached our destination of Little America, about 60 miles away from the Utah boarder.  The first picture in today's blog was were we first parked...we were a bit worried about how many RVs were there when we arrived...but they all left within the hour, and we picked a good spot in their RV area for the night.  Except for a bit of highway noise, we did not have to fight any truck noises, although a few latecomers were a bit noisy.  Not bad for a free night's sleep.  It is good to see that Little America, first built in 1952, is in such good shape.

We hit the road by 7 again, and found overcast skies, and very soon a light, but persistent rain.

But it did make for some nice pictures, smoke free pictures.

Soon we were across the Utah border.

Stopped for breakfast at a rest area a few miles into Utah.

And then found ourselves headed down Parleys Canyon.  It was a bit of a white-knuckle drive down the canyon and through Salt Lake City...and the light rain did not help any.

Along the receded Great Salt Lake shoreline is Saltair III.  Number one blew down and then burned down.  Number two was set afire by an arson.  Number 3 lies there mostly unused.  Never seen the inside, but have seen pictures of all three.  Number 1 was very popular, and the other two never could reach the popularity of the first one.

WOW, look how far down the Great Salt Lake is right now!  I have seen it low like this before, have also seen it reaching the roadway of I-80...held back in a few places by sandbags.

 

The rain started to let up out by Tooele (pronounced as Too·i·luh), and it was gone for the rest of the day.

The Tree of Utah sculpture created by Swedish Artist Karl Momen, was put alongside the roadway in the 1980's.  For decades folks would park near it and take pictures, but now there is a fence and highway sign which says "No Stopping".

Marcia did a great job getting this picture as I slowed down to 55 mph.

Our destination for the day is the The Welcome Station RV Park about 8 miles west of Wells, Nevada.  There are around 20 RV sites, just less than half are pull-through, each full hook-up, and the rest pull-in or back-in, some with full-hookups and other with just water and electric.

It is a Passport America campground, but only on Sunday through Thursday and only for one night...so we were only charged $17.50 for our one night stay.

Glad I called yesterday because the park is full.  Who would have imagined that here in eastern Nevada, as dry and desert-like that it is, that you can find an Oasis like this with plush green grass, large shade trees, and friendly folks running and owning this park.

Winnemucca Nevada – Skruffy One Year Later

Heading from Lake Jordanelle, through Salt Lake City, and on across I-80 into Nevada, there are certain sites that you just pass by.  In Wendover Nevada we passed by “Wendover Will”, who use to stand right on the state line of Nevada and Utah along the old highway…it now is about a mile to the west from the state line, still along the old highway.  Wendover Will is the "World's Largest Mechanical Cowboy", according to Guinness Book of Records, standing 63 feet tall.  We filled up at the Pilot with gas.

About 25 miles east of Wendover you pass by the “Metaphor: The Tree of Utah”, also known as the “Utah Pine Tree”, “Utah Christmas Tree”, and “That Awful Waste of Money Tree”.  All of these latter terms I have heard people call it, among some things which I cannot place in this family friendly blog post.  Back in the days of traveling with a “CB”, truckers and fellow travelers would always blast the thing.  Over the past few years (it was built in the early 1980’s) they have had to put the fence around it…but I remember the days before the fence.  Created by and paid for by Swedish artist Karl Momen, it stands 87 feet tall.  The “Tree” contains “100 tons of chrysacolla rock, 4 tons of epoxy, 160 tons of steel, 15 tons of colored cement and sand, 18,000 imported ceramic tiles, 5 tons of welding rods, 7 tons of timber for mold formers, and 20 tons of plaster.  All-in-all the structure ended up weighing 875 tons and had consumed 21,000 man hours of labor.  The project had also cost Momen over $1 million of his own funds, which was more than double what original estimates had indicated.”  (Click here for the website on the tree)

Near Wells, you can see the northern portion of the Ruby Mountains, as the Interstate runs just north of the mountain range.  Ruby Dome, which you can see from the town of Elko, is 11,387 feet tall…but I did not like the picture from Elko due to the haze.  The southern portion of the Ruby Mountains is the known for a B-17 crash back on January 2, 1943.  It took until June 24, 1943 to find the wreck, and it took a week to recover the bodies of the ten fliers, four officers and six enlisted men.  An Accident Review Board concluded that, while on instruments, the pilot had not maintained sufficient drift correction to stay within the airway, and that extreme downdrafts caused the aircraft to descend approximately 1300 feet below assigned altitude, resulting in the crash into the mountain.

I have driven the 380 mile route that we took today at least 50, perhaps 100 times.  In a car, I try to cover it “as fast as I can” from Reno to Salt Lake City.  By motorhome, it is hard to keep it at 62, my normal travel speed…but I did keep it under 65 most of the time, but hard to do on a few hills.  Also, there are a few areas where I had to shift down to second gear…the most notables are just before Elko and near Battle Mountain..and in the 95 degree heat, I turned off the A/C, but did not see any increase in my temperature gage….better safe than sorry.  We got to Winnemucca at 3:30, with a time change of an hour at Wendover, so it took us seven hours.  Hmmm…seems I have made it from Salt Lake City to Reno is seven hours before by car…but now days, who is in a hurry????

   

Last year at this time we were in Alaska.  Spent the “morning” of the longest day in Seward where, at the stroke of midnight, saw the moon come over the mountains on the other side of Resurrection Bay…if you click on the picture left, you will also see a small fishing boat along the reflection of the moon in the water near the mountains on the far side of the bay.  But we awoke the next morning with a very sick little dog.  Skruffy, whom we were watching closely over the weekend, awoke on Tuesday throwing up.  A visit to the local vet found that he had gone on vacation…and a call to the emergency number told us to go to Soldotna or Anchorage…about the same distance away.  Thank God we picked Soldotna Animal Hospital.   The top picture shows Skruffy in the arms of Marcia…the left picture with Skruffy as we traveled to Soldotna (100 miles, about three hour trip), and the picture to the right of Skruffy the next day after Dr. Meezie had started to successfully treat her.  On Tuesday when Meezie told us, “…if she makes it through the night…”, our hearts hit the floor…we had no clue she was that sick.  She turned out to be diabetic, which due to our ignorance, turned into pancreatitis, and she was very anemic.  After two nights in the Soldotna Animal Hospital, and seeing that she was having Separation Anxiety, we were able to bring her to the motorhome on Thursday. When we returned that afternoon with her, she barked at everybody and they said, “Wow, that is an entirely different dog.”  However, it was Meezie’s (click to read our post about Meezie, a GREAT Vet, Fisherman, and person) professional and loving care (with the help of the entire animal hospital) which kept our precious little girl from passing on to the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.  A week later, we took her in for the final appointment, this after a trip to Anchorage to have a ultrasound of her liver.  The tests on July 8th came back with positive results of her liver healing…and off we went.  But it was a very difficult journey for us.  On the night of the 21st (3 am in the morning of the 22nd), I awoke and started to write Skruffy’s obituary.  On the day that we got the test back that she was going to heal, I finished the obituary with a twist…and posted it.  Read “Skruffy’s Last Bark?”, but warning…you will need tissue.

So here is a picture of Skruffy I took yesterday or the day before.  A year later, our little girl is doing very well.  I posted another thank you to the Soldotna Animal Hospital on their facebook, and emailed Dr. Meezie again to say thanks….again.  She is so nice, she answered back within a couple of hours, and said, in part: 

“Glad to see Skruffy is still doing well.  She (and the rest her family) will always hold a special place in my memories of cases I was proud to be a part of.  She is a little trooper.”

Meezie…we just can’t thank you enough….and all the people you work with...