Adventures with Luna: Day 66 - Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah

I had planned on getting up for sunrise, but that did not quite work out. I always set two alarms, 15 minutes between them, one to get me started on waking up so I can take my time, perhaps sleep a few more minutes, perhaps just get up then, the other if I do go back to sleep. It was after 1:00 am that I finally got to sleep, so I guess that when my alarm went off at 6:30, I was groggy enough that I shut off both alarms and went back to sleep until 9:00 am, ah well, it was a driving day so being well rested was important. Luna and I spent the next 3 hours walking around the salt flats and having some fun with photography. The salt flats are beautiful and very cool, it is just too bad that people are allowed to drive on them as the tire tracks and muck they stir up take away from what would otherwise be something even more incredible, but there were signs about these Bonneville Salt Flats being the place where some major international speed races are held. A couple people came and went, but once two vehicles were there at the same time with more coming, I decided it was time to go. I stopped in town to consult my phone for a little while, checking out where I wanted to head next and what places I might want to visit in Oregon, seeing as I had not planned to visit the state initially. I chose to head first to Blacklock Point, almost 14 hours away.

After about 5 hours of driving I was getting immensely disenchanted with the long drive and decided I would stop once I reached a place I could spend the night. For quite a long time I was driving through the middle of nowhere and with half a tank left and a sign saying there was 81 miles to go to the next gas station, I decided to stop for fuel. As I pulled up to the pump and stepped out of my car, a man with the truck and camper from the other side of the pump approached me “I hope you don’t need gas” he said “Do they not have any?” “Nope and we are clean out, we don’t have enough to go anywhere now”, thankfully, he had AAA (what the US calls AMA), so they were on their way, but he and I talked about the route I was taking as he had come from the Oregon coast and if there would be fuel in 81 miles or not, seeing as there had been a sign quite some time ago saying there would be fuel in this place. I asked him about whether much of the surrounding land was BLM land as perhaps I would just sleep in my car around there, he thought it was and said with concern “Lock your doors!”. Telling each other “Good luck”, we parted ways, me headed back in to the middle of nowhere, him, his wife and his dogs waiting on AAA. It was almost 7 hours in to the drive (thankfully we gained an hour in the drive, so it was only around 5:45 rather than 6:45) and not too long after this stop that I came across a sign for a recreation area and my beloved little picture of a tent that means camping is available. I decided to try it out, not wanting to go far off my route with a dwindling tank of gas. Thankfully it was only a mile or so down the curving dirt road to the camping area, a parking lot with an outhouse.

During my drive I had begun to think how it looked like the wild horse territory that I’ve seen in photos, I then realized the fences were gone and soon after, crossing signs with silhouettes of donkeys that must have signified wild burros and finally a sign with a silhouette of a trotting horse came up, I hoped I would be so lucky as to see some mustangs or burros, but didn’t think it too likely. I had parked, had Luna out for a play, visited the outhouse and was sitting in my car to escape the cold wind, watching out my back window for wildlife and almost trying to persuade myself to get reading or something as the chance of me seeing a mustang wasn’t high when suddenly two horses came galloping down the hill “Luna! It’s them! Oh my god, it’s them!” I said excitedly, as if we had been expecting some highly esteemed guests and they were just pulling up. I’m not sure how I managed it, but I grabbed my camera case, pulled my camera out, took off the cap, opened my upper back door and snapped two photos while I watched them and they were only in view for a matter of seconds. I expected them to almost immediately pop out the other side of the hill and bushes, but they didn’t. It was at least 10 minutes, although it felt like much longer, before they appeared again, galloping across the field, excited by the cold wind. The bay stallion was the obvious leader and the black one was very watchful, if I made any loud noises, he was the one who would stare my way, they bay seemingly trusting him to keep a lookout while he filled his belly. The bay had a roll after the long gallop, then they grazed for a bit, then both of them rolled side by side before getting back to grazing. Eventually, I risked leaving my car to watch them slightly closer, then deciding to see how close I could get to them, expecting the answer to be ‘not very’ and I was right, I was perhaps 10 yards closer to them (which was very far away still) when they trotted off, heads high. I was freezing, in my haste I had slipped on my broken flip flops rather than my wet runners (from walking through puddles in the salt flats) as well as my long, puffy ‘sleeping bag’ jacket over my pjs. My body was warm, but my toes, face and hands were starting to feel like they had pin needles poking in to them with how cold the wind was. Back in the car, I watched out my windows a little longer, but did not expect them to return (although I wouldn’t have made myself so known to them if I wasn’t ready to see them go, it was just too cold to watch any longer anyway!) and did not think any others would come. I prepared myself for what was the coldest night yet on my trip, piling on my toque and thermal socks along with adding my back on track quarter sheet to my pile of sleeping bags. I used a couple expired hand warmers that had been given to me as well, switching my hands between holding them and holding my book as I read and each hand became too cold to hold the book easily. All my unexposed flesh was perfectly cozy and I made sure Luna was as cozy as could be as well, although it is difficult as she frequently repositions herself, making her sleeping bag come off of her. In the morning, our water was frozen solid.