Travels with Just One Snowbird, Park City UT, April 13, 2013

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Travels with Just one Snowbird, Park City UT, April 13, 2013

What a day. I hope I remember it all!!

Kristine left for Coachella (massive multi stage concert) in Palm Springs on Thursday. Lou and I have been fending for ourselves. He decided, if we could find someplace for Maggie to spend the day, Saturday, he would take me to Wendover UT/West Wendover NV, to check out the casinos. You know there was no way I was not going to find a wonderful place for Maggie to spend the day, and between us, we did. Neighbor and good friend, Susel, mother of twins, volunteered when she heard our plans. Susel and family including Maggie had many events to choose from, the last day of skiing before the mountain closes, swimming, gymnastics, bowling…..Maggie left at 9:30 am with a bag full of clothes to be prepared for any event. Skiing was ruled out early, too warm.

Lou and I were on our way shortly thereafter in his slick Audi A4 (four door 6 speed sedan). It is approximately 120 miles due west on I80 to Wendover, UT/West Wendover, NV, the nearest casinos. I googled the area and saw each town had several casinos. Heaven. BUT, the best part, we had to pass a portion of the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats. 120 miles on I80 can get boring, so I had a lot of time to research what I was seeing. Here goes the history/environment lesson. The following can look like a lengthy read, but my loyal readers will enjoy the fun facts I have chosen to include. If you want to skip what might be boring to you, bypass the paragraphs I have indented.

Using the always accurate Wikipedia as my major source:

The Great Salt Lake: The Great Salt Lake, located in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah, is the largest salt water lake in the Western Hemisphere, and the fourth-largest terminal lake (no outlet)in the world. In an average year the lake covers an area of around 1,700 square miles but the lake's size fluctuates substantially due to its shallowness. For instance, in 1963 it reached its lowest recorded level at 950 square miles but in 1988 the surface area was at the historic high of 3,300 square miles. In terms of surface area, it is the largest lake in the United States that is not part of the Great Lakes region. The lake is the largest remnant of Lake Bonneville, a prehistoric lake that once covered much of western Utah. The three major tributaries to the lake, the Jordan, Weber, and Bear rivers together deposit around 1.1 million tons of minerals in the lake each year. As it is endorheic (has no outlet besides evaporation), it has very high salinity, far saltier than sea water, and its mineral content is constantly increasing. Its shallow, warm waters cause frequent, sometimes heavy lake-effect snows from late fall through spring. ((which we experienced on our ride home!!!)) Although it has been called "America's Dead Sea", the lake provides habitat for millions of native birds, brine shrimp, shorebirds, and waterfowl, including the largest staging population of Wilson's Phalarope (a small wading bird) in the world.

We passed signs indicating towns. I had to look them up:

Kennecott Trailings. Kennecott Utah Copper's tailings are the uneconomic by-product of the ore crushing, grinding, and flotation concentrating process at the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine. After processing, this barren material (devoid of metals values), is transported as a slurry in a 60' concrete pipe from the Copperton and North Concentrators to the company's tailings impoundment near Salt Lake City. The impoundment has been receiving tailings since 1907. Since then more than 1.5 billion tons of tailings have been stored in the 5,700-acre impoundment. To accommodate the approximately 56 million tons of tailings deposited annually, the impoundment dike is raised seven to eight feet per year. A peripheral discharge system keeps the entire surface area wet to minimize dust. Process and storm waters are collected on the surface of the impoundment, decanted, and recycled to the plants for reuse. Exterior slopes of the impoundment are contoured and revegetated as the dike is raised. The company has identified, extensively investigated, and addressed many environmental issues – air quality, surface water management, surface and ground-water quality, wetlands, and wildlife habitat – as part of the project planning. Many agencies and regulatory authorities have reviewed and approved this expansion, which will ensure a safe and environmentally sound project.

This area is disgusting looking. It has a large smokestack spewing ugly stuff. You can see the huge sprinklers spewing their discharge over the manmade hillside. I read many environmental web pages that blame this facility for the smog that covers the Salt Lake valley, and once you see this process you can understand why.

Clive, Utah. Clive is an unincorporated community in Tooele (I wonder how you say that. T County, Utah, United States. It is located in the western portion of the state, close to the Dugway Proving Grounds. Clive is the site of a radioactive waste storage facility currently operated by EnergySolutions.

Energy Solutions: (From their website). EnergySolutions is an international nuclear services company headquartered in Salt Lake City with operations across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries around the world. With over 5,000 world-class professionals, EnergySolutions is a global leader in the safe recycling, processing and disposal of nuclear material. We provide integrated services and solutions to the nuclear industry, the United States Government, the Government of the United Kingdom, along with various medical and research facilities. EnergySolutions offers a full range of services for the decommissioning and remediation of nuclear sites and facilities, management of spent nuclear fuel, the transportation of nuclear material and the environmental cleanup of nuclear legacy sites. EnergySolutions’ Clive Operations is the nation's largest and most comprehensively licensed commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal facility.

Dugway Proving Grounds (back to Wikipedia). Dugway Proving Ground (DPG) is a US Army facility located approximately 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. It encompasses 801,505 acres (or 1,252 sq mi) of the Great Salt Lake Desert, an area the size of the state of Rhode Island, and is surrounded on three sides by mountain ranges. It had a resident population of 795 persons as of the 2010 United States Census, all of whom lived in the community of Dugway, Utah, at its extreme eastern end. The name "Dugway" comes from a technique of digging a trench into a hillside to create a flat surface along which a wagon can travel. Dugway Proving Ground is located 13 miles south of the 2,624 sq mi Utah Test and Training Range. Combined, they form the largest military space in the United States. The transcontinental Lincoln Highway passed through the present site of the Dugway Proving Ground, and is the only significant section of the old highway closed to the public. Dugway's mission is to test, implement US and Allied biological and chemical weapon defense systems in a secure and isolated environment. DPG also serves as a facility for US Army Reserve and US National Guard maneuver training, and US Air Force flight tests - mostly from nearby Hill Air Force Base in Ogden. DPG is controlled by the United States Army Test and Evaluation Command. The area has also been used by Army special forces for training in preparation for deployments to the War in Afghanistan and alien environments.

Dugway’s History. In 1941, the US Army Chemical Warfare Service determined it needed a testing facility more remote than the US Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. The CWS surveyed the Western U.S. for a new location to conduct its tests, and, in the spring of 1942, construction of Dugway Proving Ground began. Testing commenced in the summer of 1942. During World War II, DPG tested toxic agents, flamethrowers, chemical spray systems, biological warfare weapons, fire bombing tactics, antidotes for chemical agents, protective clothing. In October 1943, DPG established biological warfare facilities at an isolated area within DPG known as the Granite Peak Installation - UTTR's range telemetry and tracking radar installation. DPG was slowly phased out after World War II, until becoming inactive in August 1946. The base was reactivated during the Korean War, under Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Speers Ponder and in 1954 was confirmed as a permanent Department of the Army installation. In October 1958, the United States Army Chemical Center, Maryland detached the U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Weapons School to Dugway Proving Grounds. From 1985 to 1991, Dugway Proving Ground was home to the Ranger School's short-lived Desert Training Phase. It was first known as the Desert Ranger Division (DRD) until redesignated the Ranger Training Brigade's 7th Ranger Training Battalion in 1987, and taught students basic desert survival skills and small unit tactics. The program was later moved back to its original site at Fort Bliss, TX in 1991, where it was deactivated in 1995. On September 8, 2004 the Genesis - a NASA spacecraft - was directed to impact into the desert floor of the Dugway Proving Ground because the topsoil there is like talcum-powder (e.g. moondust), and would likely cushion the troubled spacecraft's impact. The Genesis spacecraft's accelerometer was installed backwards, which caused the spacecraft to malfunction upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere. On January 26, 2011 Dugway Proving Ground was placed on lockdown. Al Vogel, a public affairs specialist for the installation, would only say that the lockdown began at 5:24 p.m. Employees were not allowed to leave, and those coming to work were not allowed in. Vogel said there were no injuries, no damage and no threats reported at the proving ground. There were about 1,200 to 1,400 people at Dugway when the lockdown occurred. It was later announced that the lockdown was in response to the temporary loss of a vial containing VX nerve agent. The lockdown was lifted on January 27 following recovery of the material.

Dugway sheep incident. In March 1968, 116,249 sheep died in Skull Valley, an area nearly thirty miles from Dugway's testing sites. When examined, the sheep were found to have been poisoned by an organophosphate chemical. The sickening of the sheep, known as the Dugway sheep incident, coincided with several open-air tests of the nerve agent VX at Dugway. Local attention focused on the Army, which initially denied that VX had caused the deaths, instead blaming the local use of organophosphate pesticides on crops. Necropsies conducted on the dead sheep later definitively identified the presence of VX. The Army never admitted liability, but did pay the ranchers for their losses. On the official record, the claim was for 4,372 "disabled" sheep, of which about 2,150 were either killed outright by the VX exposure or were so critically injured that they needed to be euthanized on-site by veterinarians. Another 1,877 sheep were "temporarily" injured, or showed no signs of injury but were not marketable due to their potential exposure. All of the exposed sheep that survived the initial exposure were eventually euthanized by the ranchers, since even the potential for exposure had rendered the sheep permanently unsalable for either meat or wool. The incident, coinciding with the birth of the environmental movement and anti-Vietnam War protests, created an uproar in Utah and the international community. The incident also starkly underscored the inherent unpredictability of air-dispersal of chemical warfare agents, as well as the extreme lethality of next-generation persistent nerve agents at even extremely low concentrations.

Aragonite Ghost Town. (From a western Ghost Town web site) Aragonite was established in the early 1900s as a mining site for the mineral aragonite, used as a decorative stone in building. The site was abandoned after a few years. When first opened, the site would have been very remote, which I believe is why the buildings were built in that area to support the miners. The mine was reopened (not the camp buildings) later in the century, apparently as a quarry type mining operation, but appears to have no activity for several years now. There are deep shafts and large, deep holes in the area. ((We did not check it out)) THE MOST INTERESTING THING ABOUT IT – It is notorious for having the worst speed trap in the state. There are several good areas for Stateys to hide, and we saw them!!! You will notice the picture of the speedometer hitting 100, and it was in that area. I read that fact after we recorded our speed.

Bonneville Salt Flats. The Bonneville Salt Flats is a densely-packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah. The area is a remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville and is the largest of many salt flats located west of the Great Salt Lake. The property is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is known for land speed records at the "Bonneville Speedway". Due to extraction of salt from the area, the salt flats have begun to disappear. Once around 90,000 acres in size, they are now only 30,000 acres. The salt layer is thought to be shrinking due to the use of the salt in the making of potash, a mineral ingredient used in fertilizer. ((PICTURE OF SALT HILLS IS AT A MORTON SALT FACILITY)) A nearby potash plant uses a system of canals, pipes, and tunnels to collect the brine that is produced during the rainy winter season in the area. This brine is then used to make potash. The company has begun to voluntarily spray leftover brine back onto the salt flats. It is estimated that over 55 million short tons of salt have been taken from the salt flats since mining began in 1963. Geologists estimate that 18 inches of salt crust have been removed from the flats, and that the reduction of salt happens at a pace of one percent per year. In some areas, the salt is now a mere 1/2 inch thick.

We stopped at the rest area right on the flats. Never in my wildest imagination did I think that it would be covered by water. This area receives a lot of rain in the winter. We walked up to the edge (PICTURES), stuck our fingers in and immediately spit it out. It is sooo salty. The water color is Caribbean blue. It was magnificent. Unfortunately, it was overcast, the pictures didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped.

Wendover, UT. The town was established in 1908 as a station stop on the Western Pacific Railroad, then under construction. Current population 1567. During World War II, the nearby Wendover Army Air Field was a training base for bomber pilots, including the crew of the Enola Gay. The Enola Gay was stationed here until June 1945. There was a recent movement afoot by the residents to secede from UT and join NV as they wanted gambling in their town. It was denied by the state of UT; instead they allowed gambling to take place there.

Wendover was our final destination of the day. The two towns lie along one road, less than 2 miles long, 2 casinos in UT, 4 in NV. We hit the 2 in UT and one in NV. There is a KOA campground. The casinos were small but actually very nice. I started out winning, and was up about $100, but then put it all back, and ended up the day losing my allotted amount. I did find one penny video machine with my very favorite Open The Vault game, and it suckered me right in.

Lou really doesn’t gamble, but he does have a great knowledge of blackjack and the finer points of when to bet high and when to bet low. We spent some time watching a 6 deck table, and I could tell he wanted to play, but didn’t. There were 3 men at the table, egging him on, and he asked if this was a poker table? He was toying with them, and it was hard not to laugh. One of them even put down a $5 chip for us both to play. He denied all knowledge of the game, a big lie.

On to another casino and lunch, and these same 3 guys were there. One old dude, my kind of guy, old and bald, but with a wedding ring. On to more video slots, and then I spy Lou sitting at a table, with these 3 guys. I went over to old baldy, and apologized for Lou toying with him. He laughed and took it in stride, saying all 3 got a good laugh out of it, and expressing his appreciation for the card player Lou is. Next I said, “What would you say if I told you he was my boyfriend?” The guy’s lower jaw dropped. So gullible. I laughed, and said, “No, only future son in law being wonderful to his MIL and taking her gambling. We almost ran away from the table, my arm in his, laughing the entire way. End result? Lou up $7.25, me down considerably more but one hell of a good time.

Time to drive east 120 miles. Lou started, and I could see the clouds building in the east. We saw salt dust clouds everywhere. We drove thru them. We saw tumbleweed blowing down the road, all the time the eastern sky getting darker and darker. Lou got tired and couldn’t drive anymore. He wanted a 10 minute break. Shit. I got behind the wheel of this non BMW magnificent driving machine, taking my time to adjust the seat and mirrors, hit first gear like a pro, hit the brakes to test them and almost put the 2 of us thru the windshield. Another test, first, second, brakes, and I managed that safely. 10 minutes my eye. I drove the rest of the way home, first thru the salt clouds, then thru the mist, then thru the rain, then thru the sleet, then thru the snow. Speed limit most of the way was 75, I kept in the middle lane so I could pass the slow 18 wheelers. Speaking of 18 wheelers, I saw a cab with 3 trailers hanging on – never saw that before. I have to admit my knuckles were white from gripping the ultra cushy steering wheel so hard, and I accidently turned off the gps while trying to raise the volume on the radio. Lou got his much needed quick nap and I felt like a teenager driving the Audi.

Susel called just s we were turning into the street, Maggie really wanted to sleep over, so, of course we let her. We brought her home, she got some pajamas and church clothes, and back to sleep with the twins. Ahhhhhhhh.

My trip has been wonderful. Lots of quality time with the girlies. Maggie ‘talks’ to me, which I love. We worked on her rainbow loom, played American Girl dolls, read, puzzles, horseback riding lessons, gymnastics, shopping. Kristine and I spent a lot of time shopping, bridal veil, Mother of Bride dress accomplished, and florist. They all love it here love the lifestyle, love their neighbors, and they all are making some good friends. I like that. Watching the wedding plans come together is fun. Kristine should have been a party planner, she has a good eye for the details. The wedding venue is beautiful and visually it will be a stunning event. I am happy.

This will probably be my last posting for this trip. I just have a few philosophical things to say about the mountains. I am an east coast girl at heart. I have to be near the ocean. I talk to God at the ocean. The gulf doesn’t do it, it has to be the ocean. These mountains in UT are beautiful. The high desert I find beautiful but unfriendly. I know in my heart that I can talk to God here, too, but somehow it is just not the same for me spiritually. I don’t feel as serene and healed as I do when I talk to the God of the Sea. I love the mountains for their majestic beauty. Seeing the sun shining on the snow covered peaks is heavenly. Today I drove the longest stretch of straight road I have ever been on in my life; I estimate it was 50 miles long. That in itself is amazing to me. 50 miles without a curve or a turn. The scenery was deceiving. You see a peak in the distance and think you will come up to it in 5 minutes. 45 minutes later it is still in the distance. (One of the things I need to do before my summer road trip west is learn what you call these different mountain structures…….mesas? buttes? Peaks?) I do have a new appreciation for western scenery, I know God is here and he will hear me. It’s just different.

Kat out

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Photos

Morton Salt Works
look carefully for the salt mountains in the center

What is this?
Stuck out in the middle of the desert I spied this....sculpture? antenna?

The start of the salt flats area
It is dry here

Wendover looking west to W Wendover
2 very small towns.

Wendover Will
welcoming you to West Wendover, NV. This could easily become one of my all time favorite photos

Mobile home park
These were the only homes I saw in Wendover. Can you imagine what this is like in the 120 degree heat of the summer?