Utah - Day 8 - Bonneville Salt Flats Speedway and vicinity

Great Salt Lake State Park, Magna

Friday, 8 October 2021

today's route

I'm including more than just my route because I also wanted to show the main reason I drove out this road - the map calls this area "Great Salt Lake Desert" which made me curious, and the military has training areas out here.  Plus, I found on the Google map that the Bonneville Salt Flats Speedway is out there, and I was curious about that.

We left the Salt Lake City campground before 8 and stopped at a grocery store, and then lucked onto a small park so the dogs could take another walk before the drive.  That park turned out to be even luckier because I found a recycling bin that took everything except glass (okay because I'd dumped my glass at the liquor store yesterday), so I was empty of recycling - yea.

The speedway area can be best viewed from a highway rest area about 5 miles from the border with Nevada, and that rest area is more than 100 miles from Salt Lake City.  But I'm here to see what makes Utah unique, and this area seemed to qualify.

I'll say right now that drive is one of the more boring drives I've ever done.  For part of the drive the road skirts some mountains, and there are mountains more or less in the distance the whole way, but otherwise it's flat and featureless.  Not even any trees.  I got so tired of it I kept asking myself why I was driving all this distance for an unknown end, but I kept going anyway.

The end was fascinating and I'm glad I went.  Though I did get so tired of it I ended up driving at least 75 mph for much of the way (speed limit 80 mph) just to get it over with faster.  But it was a flat straight road most of the way and there wasn't any wind to speak of, so all I lost was gas mileage.

There was sporadic rain with low clouds blocking the view for much of the drive.  Except for the mountains, it felt like I was on a causeway, because the road was bounded by mud flats, looking like the tide had gone out.

But I heard on the radio that the Great Salt Lake, which doesn't have tides, "continues to shrink" so maybe that has something to do with the mud flats?

I noticed that someone had somehow gotten down onto the flats and used dark colored stones to outline a heart.  I wondered how long it had been there and whether it had made someone (besides me) smile.

I also saw several pieces of public art, though at first I thought I was imagining them.  One, for instance, at about milepost 26 looked like a thick tree with about 6 balls of various sizes and colors hanging from it.  Another at milepost 21 was a dragon.  I couldn't even find somewhere to pull over to take photos so I don't know how the artists installed their creations.

I did see several signs saying "High Wind Area" but fortunately not for me today.  

And then I got to the rest area.

Bonneville Salt Flats Speedway: 

Bonneville Salt Flats Speedway

a different view

Do you remember a really old movie called Blow-up?  Where the photographer keeps enlarging bits of photos he took in a park that seem to reveal a crime?  Well, this was no crime but -

- this is what's going on way out there on the flats.

And here's the explanation for the speedway (but not the people on it).

I've enlarged the text below.
The marker was "erected by The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company."

There were other signs out there that were interesting in other ways.

And when blown up, you can see the sign:

This didn't seem to stop anyone
from walking out there.

I was surprised there weren't any signs explaining what these salt flats are or where they came from, so I looked them up.  About 15,000 years ago, this entire area was covered by Lake Bonneville, as big as Lake Michigan - so big it spanned several states.  As it slowly dried, it became saltier; then the water evaporated and left salt deposits.  The flats now cover about 30,000 acres and are owned almost entirely by the federal government.  The military has storage depots, test areas and bombing sites here.

It wasn't a great place to walk the dogs.  The vegetation was sparse and unfriendly (Dexter got a sticker), and several other people had their dogs out too.  But we did our best.

It was just a strange place to me - it looked like a lake had frozen over and was covered with ice and snow.  I've seen that plenty of times and since it was chilly today, that's what my mind kept seeing.  But that's not it.  It's just a thick crust of very salty soil.

The distance back was actually longer because I had to keep driving west from the rest area to get to a place where I could cross the highway and head back east.  After such a long boring drive, I was really tired.

The wind picked up substantially during the afternoon, and tonight's campground was completely unsheltered in any way.  It consisted of 5 RV spots next to the lake's marina.  Strong smell of salt air but none of the advantages of the ocean to go with it.  When I took the dogs out at bedtime, we had trouble walking because the wind had picked up so much.  I felt really lucky that it hadn't been like that while we were on the road or I might not have gone all the way to the flats.

And despite it all, I think it was well worth the drive.  All that hard salt.  Weird.