Day 5 - Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada

On day 5 (Saturday, May 22nd), we woke up and headed from our campsite in Rawlins, Wyoming through Utah and into Nevada. Amazingly, as we headed through Wyoming, we encountered SNOW. It started as light flurries, but at some points it was so heavy that the ground had a layer of white on it and ice caked on the windshield of the car (it's incredibly bizarre to see snow on little desert scrub bushes - check out the pictures). We stopped for gas in Wyoming, and the employee inside the store confirmed that it ALWAYS snows in Wyoming in May - we couldn't believe it, though figured that the weather probably contributes to the fact that the population of Wyoming (the 9th largest state) is only 500,000.

Finally, we left Wyoming and entered Utah through ENORMOUS mountains on route 80. We drove into Salt Lake City, parked the car, and visited the Mormon Tabernacle choir. Unfortunately, the choir was closed to visitors on Saturday because they were recording, BUT we were able to stand outside the building and still hear the choir rehearse (they sounded amazing). After leaving the tabernacle, we walked past the Mormon temple and counted NINE simultaneous weddings - NINE!!! - scattered around the sides of the building. We left the city (there's not much else to do there) and headed for the lake.

At this point, we'd seen quite a few cities on our trip: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City. In reality, Chicago was the last "real" city we visited up until San Francisco - Salt Lake City was MUCH more like just a large suburban town with five giant skyscrapers stuck in the middle than a city. Denver was more city-like (similar to Washington, D.C., in my opinion), but neither had the same feeling of being in a city that one gets in Chicago or NYC. Being so accustomed to NYC, visiting what is considered a "large" city in the west was a bit surprising to us.

Alrighty - on to one of the most interesting stops in our trip: the Salt Lake in Utah!! We found out that the saltiness of the lake prevents everything but small brine shrimp from actually living in it, so there were hundreds of birds in the area eating the shrimp from the lake, but not much else. The lake itself is located past a large area of salt flats (basically, a large salty beach with pools of water scattered around it). When we finally got through the flats to the actual lake (it was quite the hike), we noticed the lake was incredibly shallow and (well, we noticed this long before we actually got the lake) smells TERRIBLE. In any case, we had a good time running around looking for salt near the lake, and the view of the mountains over the lake is great.

Leaving Salt Lake for Nevada seemed to take forever. The drive was completely straight, flat, and long, and the mountains in the distance never seemed to get any closer. We did see a few salt companies with giant mounds of salt near the outskirts of the lake, which was pretty cool.

Nevada was a surprise - no less than 50 feet into the state, we encountered 3 casinos. There's not much in north Nevada, but every single gas station had a casino and alcohol in it. With so many casinos, you'd think that the economy would be good, but almost every town we drove through was composed of trailer parks and run-down buildings.

A few hours through Nebraska, we realized that our destination for the night, a state park that allowed free camping, was probably a bad idea. Not only was there no phone number for the park, but it also lacked an exact address. Remembering the dirt road fiasco of Colorado, we called AAA and found a campsite off of route 80. The site was great - we set up our tent on the grass, cooked tomato soup and rice on our propane stove, and got to bed. Miraculously, we survived the 30 degree temperatures, though it started to snow again at one point. It was a huge relief to know that our next destination was a hotel (warm beds!) in San Francisco :-D

Check out the pictures that were added to the Colorado post! Our first day in San Francisco will be up soon :-D