Bonneville Salt Flats

This past weekend, Hilary and some girls she knows, Amy and Denise, and myself decided to make a quick overnight 'camping' trip to the Salt Flats near Wendover, NV. I use the word 'camping' only because I don't know what else you would call a 14-hour walking-and-sleeping-only excursion. Luckily, Denise brought along a 72-hour kit and Hils had hot chocolate to share for the next morning when I got up (not woke up, I didn't sleep) on the brink of freezing to death. Although when I think about it, there is probably nothing more dramatic or romantic than dying in the desert when one can see the bright lights of Wendover on the horizon, welcoming arms inviting to the land of $4.99 buffets and geriatric gambling.

We left just before 10:00 on Friday night and drove for about an hour and half before I thought I had found the road we wanted to ditch the car on and walk for a while. Not surprisingly, the road was not in fact the correct one and instead led us to this sign:

In case you can't tell, the sign informed us that we were in fact on a closed landfill. In the desert. On the Utah-Nevada border where it was sure to be full of toxic waste. It was awesome. Amy jumped out of the car and almost collapsed laughing when she realized that we were truly heading nowhere good.

Also, I don't have the picture but we definitely considered parking at the entrance of the speedway and might have been sleeping ON the track when the speed tests began first thing on Saturday morning. I'll admit that I am a little bit disappointed that things didn't go that way - it would have been interesting to be roused by the sounds of motorcycles driving 209 mph just for fun.

Eventually we found a relatively lonesome spot after walking a couple of miles and set up the camp/tarp. Notice how everyone else was prepared with blankets, hats, gloves? I uh, wasn't.

Hils and I tried to take a decent picture but the cornea-scorching brightness of the camera flash made it impossible.

Honestly, I can't complain about being so cold that I couldn't sleep because I was awake to see the sun rise, something that hasn't happened in some twenty years. It looks like this at 6:00 in the morning:

After the sun was high enough to thaw everyone out, we each went our separate ways to do some *ahem* business and then began the walk back.

Yes, I'm pretty sure my car was in view the entire time. It is no-joke flat out there.I was glad to find that Kenni (with an i) had taken some time to reflect. And collect that many rocks because man, it must have taken some time.

After stopping to talk to the race-coordinators at the raceway, we hit the road at around 9:00 with only one quick stop to take a picture of the WHITE salt flats where we should have been in the first place.

It was a good time. Anyone up for round 2?