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It was sad packing away our tents after a fun/serene/adventurous/relaxing week in America's most protected expanse of wilderness with the intent of driving back to civilisation. It was also sad that Seth had to go back to work and so was flying home from Salt Lake City that afternoon. However, it was exciting to think of our imminent road trip across Utah's arid Salt Flats, Nevada's bone dry Great Basin, over Nevada and California's batholith Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, through California's luscious Central Valley finally reaching San Francisco's foggy Bay Area overlooking the second ocean of our trans-continental adventure, the breezy Pacific Ocean!

The crack in the car's windscreen was getting larger by the day and now it could justifiably be described as fairly sizeable, being that it now extended half way up and across the window; probably exacerbated by the oscillation between the hot August days and freezing high altitude nights. It took us the best part of the morning and afternoon to drive back down Wyoming to Salt Lake City in Utah. We swung by the airport to drop Seth off and then swung by REI to drop off our rented gear. Our Yellowstone adventure was over .

The wind had really picked up some and by the time we went to check in at our swanky Hilton Hotel, which we managed to bag super-cheap on Hotwire, we could barely stand up straight walking from the car to the hotel reception. We had to stay the night in Salt Lake City to avoid driving through the night on our way to California. And I guess Melinda needed some breaks being the only legal driver of our group. After a swanky pants, slap-up meal we chilled in the indoor pool and jacuzzi looking out at the howling storm picking up outside.

Luckily, despite how fierce it looked to get, the storm had completely abated by the morning, leaving us with a gloriously sunny day to cover our 750 mile road trip. We set out west on the I-80 at about 9:00am with the Great Salt Lake glistening on our right. The Great Salt Lake is the fourth largest terminal lake in the world, meaning that it is the end of the line for the water that drains into it, although it's size can fluctuate from 950 square miles to 3,300 square miles. It is likened to the Dead Sea as it is so incredibly saline that you can float on it. Also of interest, to me at least, is the Utahraptor, a Cretaceous period dinosaur bigger than a person and the largest raptor excavated to date, discovered in the area in 1975 and named as a unique species in 1993.

Before reaching the Utah-Nevada state line a couple of hours after we set off we drove through the Great Salt Lake Desert and the Bonneville Salt Flats, criss-crossing through several small mountain ranges. The Salt Flats are home to the Bonneville Speedway where most of the world's land speed records have been broken, including the first one in 1914. Our first city after leaving SLC was Wendover, on the Utah side of the state line, entirely contiguous with the city of West Wendover on the Nevada side of the state line. Utah is one of only 2 states in the US to outlaw all forms of gambling (the other is Hawaii), which probably explains this bizarre situation. The two cities merge seamlessly apart from the state sign that appears half way through the urban mass and the noticeable difference in billboard advertising for brothels and casinos suddenly appearing.

When we saw the state line sign we changed our clocks to Pacific Time, although technically the city of West Wendover is the only place in Nevada to share the Mountain Time zone with Utah, due to it's economic ties with Wendover. After all it would be very bizarre to a have a single community divided by time as well as laws. After driving through several more micro-mountain ranges we passed the tiny cities of Wells, Elko and Carlin. At 18,000 people, Elko is the largest city between Utah's SLC and Reno on the western border of Nevada. A random, isolated microcosm of culture in an otherwise barren desert, Elko hosts the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering every January and the National Basque Festival, the "Basco Fiasco", every July.

Both Wells and Carlin are quite nondescript, however, what was quite fun was when we stopped for fuel in a gas station that felt like Rutger Hauer could've appeared at any moment asking for a ride. Speaking of which, there are many signs along the arid, Nevada Interstate 80 warning drivers not to pick up hitchhikers. Nevada has been ranked the most dangerous state in the US, with violent crime 45% higher than the national average and the highest rate of vehicle theft in the country. Hitchhikers could also be escaped convicts from the nearby maximum security High Desert State Prison, or aliens from Nevada's very own Area 51. Perhaps.

After Carlin was Battle Mountain, the half way point between Salt Lake City and Reno, where we were planning to stop for lunch. We passed through Winnemucca next, where, interestingly (again, possibly only to me), Sun Yat-Sen visited in 1911 to worship at Winnemucca's Chinatown, probably in honour of the many Chinese communities that appear along this route due to the influx of Chinese immigrants that helped build the historic Transcontinental Railroad in the 19th century. We also passed through Lovelock and Fernley before reaching the conjoined twin cities of Sparks and Reno.

Much like Wendover and West Wendover, Sparks and Reno are technically two separate cities although for all intents and purposes they are a single urban area. I'm not really sure why these two are separate as there is no state line to split them, but I do know they don't exactly get along, like Siamese twins where one has all the money and is really popular, and no one really pays much attention to the other. Although, to be honest the only reason I've even heard of Reno is because of the R.E.M. song.

We passed through Sparks and arrived in Reno mid afternoon and decided it would be cool to grab some food and check the place out for a couple of hours. Known, for some strange reason, as the "Biggest Little City in the World", Reno, much like Las Vegas in the south of Nevada, has a reputation for gambling, whoring and quick divorces. They also make cracking sandwiches! After lunch we went for a quick drink and wander round downtown before getting back in the car, as we still had a fair way to go until we reached San Francisco.

Reno and Sparks sit in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, so it wasn't long after leaving that the scenery began to change dramatically. Almost like a line had been drawn along the ground, the vegetation went from arid desert to lush green in an instant, and only a few minutes after that did the California state line sign appear as we climbed the winding road up the mountains. By climbing the Sierra Nevada we were also leaving the Great Basin for the first time since Wyoming. The Great Basin is a massive, arid watershed notable for being incredibly flat with abrupt, narrow mountain chains and covers the vast majority of Nevada, most of Utah, parts of California, Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming, and even sneaks into Mexico a little bit. I mentioned the great continental divide in a previous post, which indicates which ocean any water from lakes or rivers will eventually drain into, however, any water that finds its way into the Great Basin can only escape via evaporation.

The first town we passed through since entering California was the pretty, historic railroad town of Truckee, an Anglicised form of a local native America word meaning "Everything is okay". Then, winding our way down the absolutely stunning Sierra Nevada mountains and having broken the back of our 12 hour road trip, we passed through the cities of Roseville and, California's capital, Sacramento. But, with only a few hours left until San Francisco, there was no time for stopping. The wilderness now firmly behind us, we slogged through the towns and cities of Davis, Dixon, Vacaville, Fairfield, Vallejo, Crocket, Rodeo, Hercules, Pinole, San Pablo, Richmond, El Cerrito, Albany, Berkeley and Emeryville. Oakland was our penultimate city, being slowed slightly by the post-work traffic, vying to join the Bay Bridge over San Francisco Bay. The crossing, still the I-80, is one road over two bridges that meet on Yerba Buena Island in the middle of the great bay and overlooking the mysteriously named Treasure Island.

It was really quite late by this time and the sun was starting to set. The temperature outside had hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit but when we drove off the Bay Bridge into San Francisco the temperature characteristically dropped substantially as we entered the peninsula's famously cool microclimate. After covering over 1,100 miles in two full diurnal arcs of the sun we were all completely shattered, especially Melinda, who had truly taken one for the team by taking on the entire driving task for today's marathon road trip, let alone the past week in Yellowstone! We drove around the city in the half light looking for our hostel, and then, after checking in we went out for a well deserved hot meal and beers.

We had finally arrived at the Pacific Ocean, the opposite coast to where we had started our journey at Long Beach, New York. As Lewis and Clark said in 1805, when Europeans reached the Pacific coast for the first time after they'd set out to conquer and claim the North American continent as part of their Westward Journey, and as is commemorated on the 2005 nickel:

"Ocean in view! O! The joy!"

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