From Nevada to Utah
Topic: June 25, 2005
Today we took off from our motel in Ely, NV worried about the long stretches of highway we would be traveling today. The great distances turned out not to be our biggest worry for the day! You are very aware of the weather conditions as you drive along on a motorcycle and we had been very lucky dodging bad weather along Route 66. Was our luck going to hold out? The sky seemed foggy when we started out.As we started driving Southeast, we began to smell smoke. What we thought was smog or an overcast sky was smoke from forest fires. We had learned earlier that the dead trees sometimes covering a mountain side were caused by fires started by dry lightning. In Ely we had seen several emergency rescue trucks from various communities filled with young men. I thought maybe there was training classes going on. Now I know that they were there to help put out fires. (We had not watched the local news.) The smoke became strong enough that it was stinging our eyes but we did not see any fire. We drove through the Great Basin National Forest covering about 70 miles. We stopped to top off the gas tank at the state line station called,Border Inn, and I bought a Shaman's medicine rattle and a medicine bag made by local Indians. The manager told us that his gas tanks were in Utah and his building was in Nevada. As we started through the Spring Valley it began to lightly rain. That rain cloud moved around us for the rest of the day with us barely missing the big down pour. We skirted around the large snow-capped mountain shown here. It was another 83 miles to the town of Hinckley, Utah. The wind was very strong. We ate in Delta while waiting for the storm clouds to go over us. There were several other bikes trying to get across the mountains the same time we were. As soon as we got to the motel in Salina, the storm broke, lightning and all. We we glad we weren't caught out in the storm for there was no shelter along Highway 50. Back in Nevada we were able to see Sevier Lake which is a dried up lake with only salt left behind. We also saw this elk farm. The entrance is made of elk and deer antlers. They make things for people from antlers. P.S. The fires wre in Gunlock.