Taking it with 1 billion grains of salt...
We left Rock Springs this morning heading for SALT Lake City, UT and the Great SALT Lake Desert (which includes the Bonneville SALT Flats). I'm feeling thirsty just thinking about it. The remainder of the drive through Wyoming was pretty boring, although we did start to see snowcapped mountains in the distance. We also found a place (if you can even call it a 'place') called Little America, WY. We were bombarded with roadside billboards, sort of like South of the Border in the Carolinas, but not nearly as funny or racist. What we found, however, was little more than a glorified gas station with a playground. They didn't even have any "Little America" postcards - lame! We bought some 95 cent coffee and continued on our way.
We left Rock Springs this morning heading for SALT Lake City, UT and the Great SALT Lake Desert (which includes the Bonneville SALT Flats). I'm feeling thirsty just thinking about it. The remainder of the drive through Wyoming was pretty boring, although we did start to see snowcapped mountains in the distance. We also found a place (if you can even call it a 'place') called Little America, WY. We were bombarded with roadside billboards, sort of like South of the Border in the Carolinas, but not nearly as funny or racist. What we found, however, was little more than a glorified gas station with a playground. They didn't even have any "Little America" postcards - lame! We bought some 95 cent coffee and continued on our way.
TRUE patriotism lives on in Little America, WY
Soon afterwards, however, we crossed the border into Utah and were rewarded with this:
Someone is coming snowboarding with me in Park City. I mean it.
Yikes! I had always heard that Utah was beautiful but really had no idea it was this picturesque. Not only was the drive breathtaking, but we also found a great place to eat lunch in Salt Lake City. At the suggestion of our AAA tourbook, we stopped at The Dodo Restaurant in Sugarhouse and it was fabulous. The highlight was the Roasted Tomato Polenta Cakes with avocado spread and tomato-pine nut relish (see below). I had a mushroom, feta and spinach quiche with a side of gazpacho soup for my actual meal; everything was delicious and reasonably priced.
We continued westward out of Salt Lake City and into the desert. This was the part of our trip Mom and I were most worried about, prompting us to buy about 10 jugs of drinking water just in case something happened in that 40 mile long stretch of highly travelled commercial highway. We weren't exactly in the wilderness, but were prepared with enough food and drink to take us into 2011. You can never be too careful. Edward Abbey is one of my favorite authors, and I was really looking forward to seeing some of his beloved Utah desert up close. Although our brief journey through the Great Salt Lake Desert wasn't exactly Desert Solitaire, it was still amazingly beautiful landscape. The sand was so starkly white, and the mirages looked like giant lakes with floating icebergs in the desert. 
That being said, getting into Elko, NV was anticlimactic to say the least. There were a couple of restaurants in 'town' and I'm sure that I could have found a cheese pizza somewhere, but instead opted to eat cheese and crackers and drink wine in the hotel room.
Dinner of Champions
We also ended up digging into that box of emergency supplies in the car, and had some canned vegetarian Hormel chili. Meh. Better than venturing out into Elko after dark.
Lesson(s) Learned: Be prepared. Even if you aren't stranded in the desert, you may get stranded at a Days Inn in Elko.
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