After noting the proper distance to maintain from 8-bit bicyclists:
it was time to leave Arches National Park. That is not to say that there were no more canyons to drive through on the way out, of course:
I headed back up to 70 west, then cut north up 6, passing Starvation Road along the way. I did not stop to find out how that road got its name. A little outside of Salt Lake City, I saw this guy:
for whom I guess just sticking his head out the window had gotten boring and he'd decided to level up. A happier dog, I have not seen in a long time. That photo was taken at about 70mph.
Not too far from SLC, I found some guys selling various types of jerky out of their RV at a gas station:
That was just too sketchy for me to pass up, so I bought myself a package of venison jerky and a package of elk jerky. Good stuff.
I also noticed that Utah doesn't seem to have the same hatred/suspicion of wind power that North Dakota had:
with a fair amount of wind turbines along many of the highways.
I stopped into SLC, but didn't stay very long. Just got some fuel and headed west on 80 to see the Great Salt Lake:
I don't think there's a better word to describe the GSL than "desolate". It was just really depressing. Extremely arid, as you'd imagine. The walk out to the water was very crunchy, and salt immediately started caking all over my shoes and feet. Just in case it needed an extra something for maximum desolateness, this was a pretty common sight on the walk out to the water:
there were dozens and dozens that I passed like that. I don't know what happened to them or how they died, but wow was it depressing to walk past one of those, let alone a few dozen.
The walk out to the water itself took about 7-8 minutes. The water had a couple of birds pecking about, but other than the birds, there were only two other lifeforms. The first was lots of
tiny brine shrimp that were fairly bright red. I took photos but they didn't come out very well. These brine shrimp get harvested for various commercial usages. The other were brine flies. There were infinite brine flies that hung out at the water's edge. There are literally tens or hundreds of billions of these things just at the Great Salt Lake alone. About a billion per mile of shoreline from what I read. You walk up and suddenly the ground which had looked like black dirt before turns white or grey as a massive cloud of brine flies takes to the air with an evil buzz. It's pretty nasty.
I did notice that there were some enormous spiders near one of the docks. I was wondering how the hell there were so many huge spiders in one small place, then I encountered the brine flies and understood. The Great Salt Lake is like heaven on earth for spiders. I don't think they even need to make webs, they can just open their spider mouths and a moment later in will fly a brine fly. If I come back as a spider, I'm moving to the Great Salt Lake.
After leaving the Great Salt Lake and shaking off the remaining brine flies and salt, it was time to drive west through the
Great Salt Lake Desert. This is indeed a desert made of salt, and it goes on and on:
Not a great photo, but it was tough to take a good one, they all came out as just a block of half blue (sky) and half white (salt) for the most part. Just imagine driving through endless flat salt, and that will be about right.
I did get a slightly better photo here:
Yes, of course I tried it, and no, the little faucet there did not work. My feet were destined to stay salty. I walked out there a bit, and took a little salt in a ziploc bag as a souvenir. You walk out and it's just crunch crunch crunch because the salt is pretty cakey. It's not like fine grains, it's more like when you expose salt to humid air and it gets puffy.
At the end of the desert are the Bonneville Salt Flats, which you already know about if you are at all interested in motorcycles. It's a super flat area where a lot of land speed records are set. I passed through there, then into Nevada. Hung a right onto 93 north, and went through the town of Jackpot, Nevada just before making it to Idaho. Now that's a name.
Stopped for the night at Twin Falls, Idaho. There's not much there, but the Shoshone Falls Park is pretty neat. Some sweet waterfalls with nonstop rainbows:
A rainbow can only hold your attention for so long, so I headed out over the Perrine Bridge:
which goes over Snake River. This is the only bridge in the U.S. where base jumping is explicitly legal. I saw a guy do a base jump right as I got there, but didn't get the iPhone out in time to get a photo. I hung out for a bit hoping to see someone else jump, but that was the only guy I saw do it.
Some of the signs on the bridge:
In the next episode, I will double the population of southeast Oregon by simply driving into it, then head west to check out Crater Lake while avoiding being burned alive by the crazy forest fires all over the coast.
Bonus Photo:
That's where I was about 6 hours ago. That's the Puu O Kila lookout in Kokee State Park in Kauai. It looks out over the Kalalau Valley. This is one of the wettest places on earth, averaging almost 38 feet of rain each year. Yes, 38 feet. It rained about five separate times in the 90 or so minutes that I was up there. Hence the sweet double rainbow.
I think I'm going to go up in one of those little powered hang gliders in the next day or so. I was thinking of a helicopter tour, but the hang gliders seem much cooler.
This is the one I'm probably going to do. They haven't had anyone die recently, unlike their competitors. They also have some pretty sweet videos up on Youtube, and they let you steer the glider when you're in the air. How can I say no?