Monty leaving his mark on Winnemucca
Todays progress
Monty saddled up
Checking out the Salt Flats
Seagulls at Salt Lake
ADA at work, Handicap Truck Parking. I'm not kidding, every truck stop has a couple of handicap parking slots. Kind of ridiculous when you realize you have to climb a ladder to get into the cab.
One lesson I have learned on this trip is that when your driving something big that you can't back up it's important to use any bathroom you can park at because it may be a long haul till you find another. Never pass up a rest area!
So we are out of Utah in a day. We are a bit over 800 miles so far, almost 600 today. When you consider we can't go over 55 and in the mountains we are often more like 35-40, not so bad. We are running around 8 MPG, which sounds god awful till you realize that if we were burning gas in this beast it would be closer to 5. I'm optimistic that after we get out of the mountains we can scoot the MPG up toward 9.
Other revelations. 5 hour energy stuff tastes pretty bad but really works well, and very useful when faced with a couple of hours of driving through salt flats. Utah gets a bad impression if you head in from the west on I80. You come out of the high desert of Nevada and descend in to the salt flats. The flats look like miles and miles of dirty snow, and then they get sort of amber. All in all it looks filthy. Some of it is wet and looks a bit like a post apocalyptic wasteland. Also the salt and dust makes your eyes burn and gives an over all impression of a VERY smoggy day in LA.
The reality is probably a lot better than the impression but it tarnishes your out look before you get to the Salt Lake which is quite striking.
later days
SK
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