September 3, 2007

September 3, 2007

The holiday weekend is over so we are safe to travel south and not worry about finding a spot to camp. I can’t believe I am now anxiously waiting for the end of holidays!! Before leaving the Salt Lake City area we drive west on I80 till we reach the shoreline of the Great Salt Lake. The lake level is low right now so we have to walk a quarter mile or so along the flats to the shoreline. We pass patches of semi-dry salt beds. Thousands of alkali flies line the shoreline; fortunately they don’t bother humans at all. The lake is eerie looking. It’s in the middle of an arid terrain and for some reason the sky just above the lake is hazy. The lake is salty because streams only flow into it and not out; so the water evaporates leaving the minerals behind. 12,000 years ago during the Ice Age, the weather was wetter and cooler here and the lake level rose dramatically reaching over 1000 feet deep. (It is only 20 feet right now.) At that time it was called Lake Bonneville and covered one-third of Utah. Eventually it overflowed catastrophically into Idaho and carved the Snake River canyons we admired a few days ago.

I would like to drive out west to the Bonneville Salt Flats but it is another 100 miles farther. The salt flats are a remnant of the drying of the ancient Lake Bonneville. We are not sure it is worth an extra four hours of driving. I guess if I was a racing enthusiast we might make the trip. Instead we head south on I15 and stop at the little town of Fillmore, UT for the evening.