24th April 2015 – Salt Lake City, Bonneville Salt Flats to Tremonton

Today we have a 121 mile drive to the Bonneville Salt Flats past the Copper mine on our left and the Great Salt Lake on our right. This salt lake is second to the Dead Sea as far as salt content goes.When we arrive at the Bonneville Salt Flats Blue B is having alternator problems again, it’s not charging, so they go into West Wendover to find somewhere to fix it. We drive out along the Tarmac access road to the entrance onto the salts flats and in the distance we can see the markers for the land speed track. We don’t go out onto the salt flat because it’s a $700 fee to be pulled out by a tractor if you get stuck. This morning 3 cars got stuck, 2 trying to pull out the first one, so the owner of the tractor did them a bulk deal and only charged them $2,000 to pull all 3 of them out! We don’t think it’s worth the risk, the sky is dark and it looks like rain. However RIP goes for a bit of a drive out on the salt and makes it back OK. Today there is a foot race on over the salt flats and up into the mountains and back again. There are 2 groups of competitors one running 100 miles and the other running 50 miles, a pretty serious race. We drive into West Wendover and meet up with Blue B who is at an auto parts store and the guys are trying to pull the old alternator apart to see if they can make 1 good one out of the 2, but this isn’t successful.Miraculously Blue B’s alternator starts charging so we have some lunch and get on the road. We are now in Nevada and we are heading towards Pocatello in Idaho for our overnight stop which is 159 miles away. We drive through the Nevada desert on a pretty straight road and we make good time, but we are heading straight into rain. The rain slows us up a bit and by the time we get into Snowville it’s getting late and there is no accommodation here, so the decision is made to go back down to Tremonton for the night as it’s closer than Pocatello and it’s raining quite heavily.