This is the first time we have arrived in Salt Lake City from the West across the Great Salt Lake. It’s like 50 miles of flat, straight and level highway across the Bonneville Salt Flats. It is about a hundred miles from West Wendover, NV to the outskirts of civilization again. We arrived in Tooele UT, (exit 99, that is 99 miles from Wendover,) and stopped at the Flying J to fuel up. I was stationed at the light in the left turn lane when I figured out that the truck entrance was directly across from me. I peered down the road and spotted what looked like an alternate entrance to the station beside their big sign board, so I went ahead and made the left. When I reached the spot it was not an entrance.

I decided to carry on to the Pilot station fifteen miles closer to Salt Lake City. My radar indicated that I needed to cross three lanes to get back on the freeway. While I was busy convincing a pickup that I really was going to merge ahead of him Judy asked cryptically, where are you going? I told her “back onto I-80” as I neatly inserted all 53 feet of our rig into the left lane and started up the ramp. “This ramp goes to Wendover,” Judy replied. “Oops! Oh well we will just double loop around and try again.” It could have been worse; it was only 16 miles back west to the first exit. It could have been all the way over to Wendover.

When we started driving this morning we called some old friends, Arnie and Mem. We met them in Texas a couple years ago. We keep in touch by e-mail and they get our blog, so they knew we were coming. We had them send us their GPS co-ordinates and this evening we drove right up and parked beside them in the Sam’s Club parking lot. We certainly have come a long way since the days when my dad would tell relatives that “if we got there first we would hang a piece of toilet paper on a bush to indicate the road to the picnic site, and if they got there first they were to take it down.” I’ll bet you all thought I got this messed up all by myself, ha ha.

We are staring down a snow storm this evening. If the weather is still clear in the morning we are headed for Moab Utah and the Arches National Monument. We will probably stay there a couple days. We don’t expect to have cell phone or internet. We will check in later.

Bye for now from Utah.

Gary and Judy