Road Trip: Red Rocks and Salt Flats

After traveling over 750 miles today, we passed some great landscapes of our beautiful country. 

The rock formations in Wyoming were amazing!

 I'd love to know what was living in all the little holes within the cliffs!

Driving through this pass . . .

 We passed into Utah.

  Utah has more of the infamous red rocks of the west!

 Interstate 80 is this close to them!

I tried to get a picture of Salt Lake City from the car window. . .

but got a little too much guard rail!

Just outside of Salt Lake City we saw a sign that said "Bad Air - Drive Less" - we could see some haze in the distance but nothing like the San Fernando Valley!

 The Great Salt Lake in just that . . .

Really salty!

We drove by miles and miles of salt flats. We saw a Morton Salt Plant - if you look really close at the yellow building in this picture you can see the Morton Salt girl!

This strange looking sculpture stands out high above the Bonneville Salt Flats right along the edge of Interstate 80.  I shot this picture out the window and didn't quite get it centered!! We didn't know what is was so we googled it!

 Entitled Metaphor: Tree of Utah - Swedish artist Karl Momen created the 87-foot high tree between 1982-1986. He financed the project himself to bring bold color and beauty to the stark, flat, salty landscape. The sculpture is made of 225 tons of cement, almost 2,000 ceramic tiles and five tons of welding rod, and tons of minerals and rocks native to Utah.  It is called the "Tree of Life" sometimes as well.

We saw more amazing rock formations in Nevada, but after about 50 miles that looked almost the same, I started reading the book "The Help" aloud.  I wanted to read the book before seeing the movie so I was Mike's personal Book on Tape!  Nevada scenery is not the most interesting so I kept of reading and we got hooked! 

I read until Chapter 13 and then my eyes had had it and it was getting dark - time to turn in for the day! We got on the road about 9 am this morning and didn't get off the road until 9:30 pm!  And we even gained an hour due to a time change! Not one stop for shopping but we made up for our other shopping trips and caught up on our miles! So we were on the road for 13 hours straight traveling from Rock Springs, Wyoming to Sparks, Nevada in one day!  Tomorrow - Homeward bound!