Nevada and Salt Lake City

Getting from California to Reno required us to go over the Sierra Nevada mountains and Donner pass. We timed it just right. The night after we drove over the mountain it got about 2 feet of snow! In fact we had to wait an extra week to get our car window replacement because it got stuck on the other side of the mountains!

We started in Reno, and took day trips from there. The first was to Virginia City, which had mined hundreds of millions of dollars in gold and silver from the Comstock Lode. This old mining town has kept its 1870’s feel by maintaining the old buildings and doing a lot of historical tours and reenactments. While we visited this delightful town we saw people dressed up from the time just walking around, visited the Choller mine, and went to a gold stamp-mill. The city has 700 miles of tunnels beneath it. The miners dug so deep that they got close to the volcanic activity deep underground. Down there the temperature in the mines was 140 degrees F and the miners could only dig for 15 min before having to cool themselves in a cooling room. It was very interesting!

We did some hikes in the area, saw Reno from high in the mountains, played disc golf at a cute little park, and even drove over to lovely Lake Tahoe.

It took us two days to drive across Nevada. It was miles of empty desert land and mountain ranges parallel to each other. We saw the occasional tiny town, some strip mining and basically nothing else for the majority of the trip.

Just after entering Utah, we came across miles of white salt flats. Some cars were out driving on it, but we didn’t want to risk getting our RV stuck! As we continued through the flats we saw salt collection equipment and huge piles of salt.

It was too cold to swim in the Great Salt Lake unfortunately, but we spent a day exploring it. The water levels have been decreasing every year since the late 1980’s and it looked very low. We drove around Antelope Island, an island in the lake which is a refuge for millions of birds, dozens of buffalo, and to our great dismay, billions of gnats! We bought head nets, but only could manage one short hike before giving up and deciding the best way to see everything was from the car!

Salt Lake City was a very pretty city nestled in the mountains. I can understand the relief of the Morman pioneers who finally found this haven. As we drive across the country I have more and more appreciation for the hardships of those who struggled west in the early days. We spent some time visiting the city and learning some history of the Latter Day Saints by visiting Brigham Young’s home. We also visited a great natural history museum that explained a lot of the geology we had been seeing during our drive. The trees were in full bloom and it was a lovely time of year to visit.