Bonneville Salt Flats Guide
Hey all, Rusty RV TV here! Welcome to my latest travel adventure. Today, I'm leaving the Great Salt Lake where I camped overnight and bypassing Salt Lake City. Instead, I'm taking a little expressway around it and heading down towards the airport. From there, I'll pick up on Interstate 80 and start trucking west.
Local Weather:
It's cloudy and rainy here, but I checked the maps and it looks like once I get away from Salt Lake a little farther west, it's going to clear up and be a beautiful day. I'm excited to visit the Bonneville Salt Flats - the historic site where they set all the world records for land speed.
As we drive, I can see blue sky way off in the distance. When it's not raining, I'll kick the cameras on and we can all enjoy the ride together.
After driving for about 100 miles, we reach the Nevada-Utah border. The land out here is flat as a pancake! We stop at a rest area that boasts some of the best views you can see of the salt flats. I'm excited to finally see it in person after watching it on TV as a kid. There is salt everywhere, and I'm sure they mine it - it must be big business.
We stop at a vendor selling some jewelry and picnic tables, and I can't help but marvel at the amazing sight before me. The salt flats are incredible! It looks like snow, but it's pure salt water. I wouldn't even want to track this stuff inside my van - it's dirty old salt! You can see big piles of it where they get it out of the ground.
The Bonneville Salt Flats has been the site of world land speed record runs since 1935, where drivers have broken records by reaching speeds of over 300 miles per hour. They've been setting records here for a long time, and it's amazing to think about all the history that's happened on these flats.
We stop at a map and see there's an international speedway out there. There's also a road that takes us out to it, so we decide to check it out. But before that, we head towards a town called Wendover, which actually splits between Utah and Nevada.
We stop at a popular truck stop and spend the night in our RV. It's a BLM property, so we can dry camp in the salt flats. We see some tire tracks despite the sign that says "soft mud - stay out." We can smell the saltiness of the air, but it's nothing like back at the Great Salt Lake. The condition of the Great Salt Lake is pretty sad right now. It's getting emptied out the way it is, and they've got problems there. Hopefully, they can fix them.
The next day, we head to the Bonneville Speedway and take a walk around. It's amazing just how flat this thing is - Mother Nature at her best. We see people taking pictures and even someone wading in the salt water. It's a BLM property, and we learn that they've built a levee road out here to a little asphalt island in the middle of all this salt water.
We also learn that there's a lot of World War II history here from airfields. We plan to find out more about that when we get into Wendover.
Overall, I'm so glad I stopped here. It's just another one off the list - all those years of driving by and wondering why I never stopped. Well, I did this trip, and I'm glad I did.
Places to Explore:
Places to Stay:
Restaurants:
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