Santa Cruz to Salt Lake City

I’m finding that this life/travel is similar to boat life in many ways, but one in particular is how you have to learn to give up ever having things go a certain way, or having what you want when you want it…it sounds awful, but the reality is once you are beaten into submission and totally give up on expectations and specific desires, you have a lot more time to just be wherever you are and deal with whatever is happening and be completely open to surprises and experiences you would never otherwise get to have.  Luckily for me, I am easily pleased – so I can be so excited about any sort of surprises -the scenery or an interesting rock on the ground or fun shaped cloud… it helps tone down the experience of being too hot while trying to position this big black hose blowing focused cold air.

Once we creeped up over the 7,000 foot elevation Donner Pass, we got cruising pretty fast and next thing you know, we’re in Reno. When I crossed over into Nevada, the first thing I noticed was diesel fuel was at least a full $2/gallon CHEAPER than California!!  That’s about an $80+ savings on a fill up for me!  But, then they upped the speed limit to 80 mph, which just uses more fuel…Even if I could even get Rita going that fast, you could probably watch the fuel gauge ticking down.   She seems to be getting between 10-13 mpg.   It’s a hard thing to get used to.

I stopped at a rest area a few hours out, I had to eat and stretch, lie down for a minute, whatever.  I love that it doesn’t matter where I stop, I’m always home.

Kruze Road Winery Harvest Hosts overnight.  Val and Dave are a really nice, cool couple who started this winery 8 years ago. They don’t sell their wine anywhere but right there, so it’s pretty unique.  I tried a flight of 3. Made my own charcuteri board.  I really liked their Sangiovese.

Rested a bit in the heat, went out to walk/watch sunset.  Golden light was making the mountainsides look surreal.

Sunset had great potential but at the end it sort of fizzled.

Had to make up Rita’s bed since I had just washed all the sheets at Deanna’s. I had screens up – but apparently noseeums can get in through them?? And a number of other weird flying bugs. I was fairly invaded -bleah! It nightmare trying to end them. Finally had to close the windows and take the screens down, it was cooling off a bit, but it was still so hot inside there.  I had a couple fans going I was sure it would be chilly by morning.

I ended up sleeping pretty well, despite the critters.  I was up early and took care of Rita’s needs. Emptied the cooler of the 3 bags of ice that were now water, checked the oil and coolant (all good!), made the bed and secured all my stuff for getting underway.  The host said I could fill up with water, so I moved over to the spigot and got my hose out and got one of the tanks filling.  It must have gotten an air lock or something, but it was spitting like it was full, even though I knew it wasn’t.  I removed the hose and water shot straight out of the fill hole, soaking me completely!  Well, I guess I got a shower afterall!  I didn’t even bother trying to dry off, I knew it would be hot soon enough.  I was on the road by 7:45am.  It was cool and super hazy, due to the all the fires.  There was hardly any traffic and Highway 80 is just flat and straight, forever into the horizon.  I had some good tunes on and Rita and I were cruising at a comfortable speed (not 80 mph, as the speed limit signs suggested).  We like to go 65 max, but 50-60 feels just fine.  As someone who never could drive below 80 before, this is quite a surprise, but we go with what’s comfortable for us. We stay in the slow lane and are happy to let everyone pass by (even the big semi-trucks pass us!).

It was around 3 hours later when we arrived in Elko, Nevada.  My uncle had really recommended I find some Basque food there, as apparently, it’s a thing.  But I wasn’t in the mood for doing anything or seeing stuff, or especially eating.  I stopped at a gas station to get some ice for the Icy Breeze. They were completely out, the clerk told me every gas station in town runs out of ice by Friday, as it comes from out of town.  There was an Albertson’s down the street, so I went there.  I got a block and a 16 lb bag, again, not at all cheap. I loaded up the cooler and decided to have a bit of a rest. It was not super hot yet, and my fan was nice.  I was in a bit of a funk.  I tried to rally to see something in Elko, but I wasn’t feeling it.  I wanted to get back on the road.  So, after a rest and some snacks, we got back on 80 East.  It was still over 250 miles to Salt Lake and I’m learning how to calculate time, given how much slower we go and all the stops.  It was going to be 7 more hours at least.  I assumed it was just going to be flat and straight the whole way, and I was OK with that.

After a couple hours the smoky haze turned into a ‘it’s going to rain’ looking haze.  And sure enough, it started pouring.  I realized I should probably close the windows.  There were no good places to pull over.  I eventually saw an exit ahead – it said Bonneville Salt Flats.  No way! I didn’t even realize what I was going to pass through, I really didn’t research the route much at all.  This is kind of a problem with me, I don’t spend a lot of time researching places I’m going to – I prefer to just GO and see what it is for myself.  I know I may miss some things this way, but, I also get to have really fun surprises, and there’s few things I love more than fun surprises!   So anyway, I get off at the Bonneville Salt Flats exit, go over a bridge and pull into a gas station (the only thing around), it was full of big trucks.  I closed all the windows, not too much wet inside, so that was good, but definitely was going to be worse.  I checked out the map and the salt flats were only a few miles farther.  I loved the movie The World’s Fastest Indian, and thought it would be fun to see the flats.  Pretty much all around was salt flats, it looked like snow – and the rain made puddles that looked like ice.  All of this was ringed with pointy mountains.  The rain stopped as I approached the end of the road

The road just ended at a cul de sac, surrounded by salt flats.  It was pretty impressive.  I parked and jumped out to marvel at it all.  After walking around on the salt a bit, and watching some crazy guys drive out on it and do donuts (despite the sign that clearly said to stay off the flats when wet).  All I could think of was how bad that was for the underside of the car. I seriously considered making sure they planned to hose it off later….

There was a woman admiring Rita, and when I got closer to her she said “que bonito!”  She was surprised when I responded in Spanish.  She was from Costa Rica, visiting her son who lives in Salt Lake.  She was so curious about Rita, so I told her everything and let her have a look inside. She couldn’t believe it, QUE HERMOSO! She took pictures and wished me well.  It was fun to get to speak Spanish!

We made our way to their gated neighborhood way up high above the city.  I finally got to the street they had said would be good parking and was happy to shut the motor off.  I looked around and all hell had broken loose (sort of).  The hook holding the bungy cord that keeps the fridge from rolling in and out while on the road – broke off the wood it was in and the fridge was out.  The bathroom door handle had broken and it was flapping open and closed (the open window and high gusty winds had blown the door so hard the little wooden closure bar had come loose.  I had to put a bungy cord around the door to the heater so it would stay shut.  Stuff was strewn about a little (one day I’ll get it all dialed in!).  I tried to tidy up, as I knew Art and Lisa would want to see her!  I also found some mysterious water on the floor under the cooler. I have no idea how that happened…but I dragged the whole thing out to the sidewalk and let it drain into the bushes.  As I was doing that a woman says “Whaaaatcha doooin’???’  Luckily it was Lisa! I was so happy to see her!  Gave her a quick tour and then Art arrived, too.

Since I was supposed to visit them last year around November and that whole trip went to hell in a handbasket (should be some other whole “prequel blog”), I never got out here. I was really happy to be here now.  I was pretty braindead from my long day, so we just hung out and talked and I got to have a shower (bliss!). Art made me some pancakes for dinner, because I saw a billboard with pancakes and it’s all I had been thinking about for a couple hours.

Once again, I was feeling super grateful to be so well taken care of and be with people I love.  The guest room was still made up with the flannel sheets that Lisa had for my aborted November visit.  Given the air conditioning indoors, the flannel was just perfect for me in July.

We had a relaxing morning, which I really needed.  When I went out to get my phone charger from Rita, I found a big orange violation warning on the windshield.  Oops, I guess this is NOT legal parking for RVs afterall.   I did some looking on my apps to see if there were any parking places around here, and Art called the nearby grocery store and asked the manager if I could park there – they said probably but the police could still have an issue maybe. Then he got the idea to ask the next-door neighbors, who were out of town, if I could park in their driveway.  Unfortunately, Art and Lisa’s driveway was too short and at a steep angle, and the HOA doesn’t allow any parking on the narrow streets at all.  The neighbor came through!  In order to head off any issues with other neighbors, Art messaged the entire HOA letting them know he had permission to use the driveway and it was only for a few days as his niece was visiting on her drive across country.  Heading off any potential grumpy neighbors seemed like a good call.  He received a number of replies from people saying how cool the bus is and wishing me well.  I just love how Rita seems to have her own personality that people really like. She gets so many compliments! It really kind of takes the pressure off this introvert to try to be charming, I can just smile and point at Rita.

With that sorted out and Rita safely in her new space (I love the back up camera!), Art and I set out to have some fun in Salt Lake City.  There was an Urban Arts Festival on that sounded like a good time.  We saw it all!  When we were having a snack, we ended up asking a woman next to us something and she haltingly said she doesn’t really speak English.  I got to speak Spanish again! She was from Bogotá, Colombia and just visiting Salt Lake, while in the US working in a town farther north.  She said the people here have been so nice and she was really enjoying her time in the US.

After we saw all there was to see there, we went through a couple other cool neighborhoods and found a Normal Ice Cream shop. It was exactly what we needed for the hot afternoon. It was this soft serve stuff, but it is not the weird bags of chemical crap, it’s made from locally sourced milk and fresh ingredients. I had a limonada ice cream and it was amazing!

We went out for Mexican food and I had a lovely mole poblano. I marveled at how US Mexican restaurants are all so very similar in the things they make, and yet none of them are really like what you get in an actual restaurant in Mexico…I can’t quite figure that one out.  It’s all good though!

We caught a gorgeous sunset, the one positive consequence of all the CA fires is that the smokey skies make the sun look beautiful.