Wednesday was a long, long day for us. We had to drive from Kaysville, UT to South Lake Tahoe, CA. More than eight hours of driving, with most of it in northern Nevada on Route 80, one of the most boring drives that has ever existed. But oh well, we got there, eventually.

The Great Salt Lake

So our first stop was the “Great” Salt Lake. We say it like that because I don’t think we got the full experience. I think it was a mix of not seeing what we expected and not going to the lake in the right spot to go swimming. We got onto Route 80 and got off at what we thought was the Salt Lake State Park. Well, we arrived at about 9:30 a.m. and it wasn’t open yet. So we drove down the street and found an opening to a walk toward the lake.

First of all, the first 100 yards of the lake is all marsh. It’s not something you can or want to dip your feet into. Then as we walked closer and closer to the lake, these huge flies started buzzing around our heads and trying to bite us. It was insane and neither of us wanted to hang around.

Here are a couple pictures of me in front of it. The second one is a close-up of my face so you can see how much I disliked the lake and the flies buzzing around it. Again, I think much of our problem was a lack of time to explore this huge body of water and not knowing where the best place was to go swimming (we now think Antelope Island would have been good).

The Bonneville Salt Flats

As we continued on Route 80 in Utah, there were some cool sights. At one point we were driving through the Great Salt Lake, with water on our right, our left, and on either side of the traffic going the other way. As we got farther west, we saw a few industrial plants with mountains of salt that it looked like they were processing. And we saw long stretches on the side of the road that looked like snow but was salt.

Then we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats, which is where they have a measured mile to record all of those land speed records. It was pretty cool — you could walk out onto the flats. With the salt being so white and the sun being so bright and reflecting, it felt like we were on another planet. Kind of creepy, actually.

Here’s Bea pretending that she’s running.

Smoke but no fire, up-and-coming Reno? and ah…Lake Tahoe, on the jump…

Smoke but no fire

We had heard from my parents that there were wildfires in three locations that we were planning to pass on Route 80 in Nevada — Elko, something I can’t remember, and Imlay. A few days before we went through there, they actually had to shut down this major interstate highway for hours at a time to contain the blaze. Luckily we never had any delays. We did see plenty of smoke, though, smoke so thick it looked like rain clouds and gray fog covering the mountains. But neither of us ever saw any flames.

Up-and-coming Reno?

After crossing northern Nevada, we entered Reno. We didn’t have to go through the city to get to Lake Tahoe but figured we should check it out. For the most part, Reno reminds me of Atlantic City or downtown Vegas. Older-looking casinos, really cheap buffets, kind of run down, etc.

But then as we traveled south to connect back up to the freeway, we drove through an area that looked like it was more up-and-coming, with some nice commercial and residential developments either done or on the way. There’s still a long way to go — we stopped at a Starbucks that was across the street from a nudie bar, for example — but it seemed like it was getting better.

That reminds me. While we were driving through Reno, we saw some people with their children. We started wondering how people get to where they are. It’s a somewhat snobbish point-of-view, because the question presumes that where we have been (Boston, Chicago) is naturally a place that people would end up. But how does someone end up in Reno, trying to raise a family in the midst of casinos and dirty bars and strippers? Wouldn’t you move out of there? How does someone end up in Rapid City, S.D., or Cody, Wyo.? What’s the history there, how did their parents and grandparents come to settle in that town?

Ah….Lake Tahoe

So then we arrived in South Lake Tahoe, which was more developed than we expected. Our reservation was at the Tahoe Valley RV Resort, so we checked in and went to our site. Then we decided that we were tired of being in RV-land every night, so we took a drive along the lake.

After a detour away from the lake and toward Sacramento (my bad), we ended up back on the coast, and drove up to Eagle Point Campground, which was in a state park right on the lake. It was perfect, real camping, tons of stars in the sky overhead, and we just loved it.