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This morning, as we entered I-80 headed west out of Salt Lake City, Penelope (our British-accented GPS voice) announced our journey for the day, “Continue 662 miles.” We did precisely that.
West of Salt Lake City lies the Great Salt Lake. I-80 passes along the southern end of the Lake, though you can’t see much from the road because it runs almost at the same level as the Lake. There are a few salt extraction operations from the lake, but there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of pleasure use of the Lake, then again, it is Winter. Further westward lies the Bonneville Salt Flats home of the Bonneville Speedway where land speed records have been set. This area of the country is incredibly flat, flatter than Kansas. You can see for miles in any direction, and though the far off mountains seem close, they are hundreds of miles away.
We stopped for breakfast in Wendover, a town right on the border of Utah and Nevada, which means it is packed with casinos, like all Nevada border towns. Nevada’s landscape is marked with small mountain ranges, each slightly different from the next. The freeway runs in the valleys between these mountain ranges, so as we drove from Wendover to Elko to Battle Mountain to Winnemucca, we were constantly looking up at (sometimes snow-covered) mountains from the floor of the desert.
Finally, around 4pm we reached Reno and debated whether to truck onward into California and over the Sierra Nevada mountains. The weather was against us because of a storm in the area causing rain and snow at higher elevations. California’s Department of Transportation was requiring chains or snow tires on all vehicles attempting to cross on I-80 and had closed the westbound side to truck traffic. Despite these conditions, we decided to continue because the weather forecast for the next few days did not look any better and could have been worse.
The drive through Donner Pass was rough and tiring. Snow was coming down heavy creating whiteout conditions, ice was forming on the windsheild so we had to stop and clear it a few times, speeds were limited to 30 mph, but we were mostly doing less than 20, and we needed to go 40+ miles in order to make it through the Pass. Thankfully, we did not suffer the fate of the Donner Party. Instead, just after 6:30pm, we cleared the snowstorm and harsh conditions and were making our way toward and through Sacramento.
Finally, after 12 weary hours of driving, we arrived in Davis, our final destination.