Not a Low Salt Diet

May 7&8, 2024 – Day 52 & 54

New Frontier RV Park, Winnemucca, NV – Wendover KOA Journey, West Wendover NV

May 7, 2024

We had a pretty easy day planned. You’ve heard that before! High winds were forecast so Paul decided to skip the easy ham radio thingee in town (remember, he still wanted to get Nevada in the books) and that we should just hit the road. Both of us have had a few drives where the winds were high. It’s exhausting and neither of us wanted another round of that. We had lunch at a rest area and were greeted with this odd sign.

We checked, all our livestock was restrained. Lunch finished we resumed our journey down the straight highways of the Nevada high desert.

We came upon a quadruple bridge! East/West cars and East/West trains. How cool is that!?

We made it to our KOA. We don’t often stay at KOA campgrounds, they are too fancy aka too expensive and offer things we neither want or need. The playground was nothing we’d let kids play in. Since we’re self contained we never even looked at the bath facilities. But out here in the middle of nowhere you take what you can get. At least they have full hookups. It was was a gravel field that wasn’t exactly level. Then there was the forecast for some nasty winds/gusts. We were happy to be parked even if we had the wind side of the RV pulled in.

The neat thing is we’re now back on Mountain Time, but wait, aren’t we still in Nevada, shouldn’t that be west coast time? 

The U.S. Transportation Department in 1999 approved a petition by the town to officially move it to the Mountain Time Zone. West Wendover relies heavily on gaming and tourism, and the bulk of its customers come from Utah. Town leaders decided that being in the same time zone as Wendover, Utah, its next-door neighbor, could only help business.

lasvegassun.com

The Wendover Nugget Hotel & Casino in West Wendover, NV is built, quite literally right on the state line. The east side of the building is mere 3 feet. It’s neighbor across the street? The east side of the building is inches from the state line. Their parking lots are in Utah.

Tomorrow we adventure but tonight we are settled in, and despite the high winds, hope to get a decent night’s sleep.

Daily: 230

Total: 4,929

Driving Miles/Day: 246

Overall Miles/Day: 93

May 8, 2024

The FIPS won’t wait. So we climbed into the Jeep and set off down a nice “paved” Nevada road to meet up where the Donner Party’s journey went very wrong. Neither of us knew that they passed through the Hastings Cutoff until writing this blog when Paul was researching the Donner Party and found that they went through the Hastings Cutoff. Excited, “We were there!” he said!

Here’s that smooth road we spoke about.

It’s hard to tell but there is a 20-30 foot drop-off to the left in that photo. We came upon some great views.

Could a Subaru have driven this road? Yes, 99% of it. But there were nasty parts where, at a minimum, you would have ripped off your front bumper.

Paul setup his radio in high winds, see how the antenna is bending?

He got his 10 QSOs then went on to get about 5 more. We drove around trying to find cell service to upload his logs. Once they were accepted he’d have NV in the books. Why the rush? The Solar CMEs were about to hit. (susan here The auroras are coming! The auroras are coming! sorry not sorry.) Ham radio had been messed up for several days now. He was finding voice communication impossible, only digital was working, and the solar forcast was for much worse. There were time pressures. We’d be heading for Utah the next day.

We didn’t find cell service but we did find some of the tracks from the original Hastings Cutoff.

We also found the Little Salt Springs Enclosure. We were on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land but this was a BLM enclosure for cattle and to protect the riparian environment. Riparian is a fancy word meaning the area between water and land. Really? Riparian? Paul had to look it up. Just say “beach,” that works for us.

That spring was tiny, not much more than 25 yards across. But wait, are there birds in there? Why yes, it was 3 Wilson’s Phalarope. This species was “unreported” in this area. Probably because only crazy people actually go out here.

It was time to go see the famous Bonneville Salt Flats. We figured we’d find cell service somewhere and yes, we did, Paul uploaded his ham log and he got his magic FIPs. We also got this view heading down onto the flats.

The salt flats were pretty amazing. They were white and flat as far as you could see.

We both got to drive on them, Susan goosed it and got to 55mph.

Soon it was time for a post salt flats ritual: the car wash.

This has got to be the most brutal car wash we’ve ever seen. Touches? Nope, Touch LOTS. And those beaters were made of thick rubber. It was loud and it was rough. How rough was it? It SHOOK the Jeep. You’d think that such an aggressive wash would actually get the vehicle clean. Right? You’d be wrong. It was still a salty mess on exit. So Paul went back in and complained. They grudgingly gave him another go through. This time the machine broke, the door unceremoniously opened. We sat there, slightly confused, wondering how all the soap was going to get off the car if the car wash wasn’t working. Some worker who makes Forest Gump look speedy was waving us to come out. “I need to reset it.” and off he walked. Slowly. Very slowly. We waited. Eventually he and someone else came out. They looked and prodded and poked a few buttons. But the car wash didn’t start up again. We were told “oh well” and when we asked what to do about the soap on the car they gave us some bad directions to another place where we could hand rinse the Jeep.

After all that “fun” we went to a new to us grocery chain, Smith’s. They’re part of the Kroger chain. A bit more upscale than, say, a Price Chopper but not as nice as a Hannaford. It got the job done though.

Life Birds: 1 (Wilson’s Phalarope)